Cable connected network server platform for telephone white-yellow page services and emergency 911 location identification

ABSTRACT

A twisted pair and/or coaxial cable fed set-top device provides a plurality of services, including computerized directory assistance services and identification of the geographic location and set top device from which a directory assistance query has been made. Directory assistance information may be broadcast from a cable head end, or a directory assistance database may be searched, based on a query entered by a user, or both broadcasting and searching may be performed. The search results can be prioritized based on the geographical proximity between locations of the listings in the search results and the location from which the query was entered. The address of the set top device and/or the tap to which the set top device is coupled are used for determining the location from which the query was entered.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to providing automated directory assistance oftelephone numbers and other information and relates to automaticallyproviding information about the geographic location and cable set topdevice from which a particular emergency 911 telephone call was placed.

BACKGROUND

As deregulation of the telephone industry continues and as companiesprepare to enter the local telephone access market, there is a need tooffer new and innovative, high bandwidth services that distinguishcommon carriers from their competitors. This cannot be accomplishedwithout introducing new local access network architectures that will beable to support these new and innovative services.

Conventionally, customer premises telephone and/or data connectionscontain splitters for separating analog voice calls from other dataservices such as Ethernet transported over digital subscriber line (DSL)modems. Voice band data and voice signals are sent through acommunications switch in a central or local office to an interexchangecarrier or Internet service provider. DSL data is sent through a digitalsubscriber loop asynchronous mode (DSLAM) switch which may include arouter. The DSLAM switch connects many lines and routes the digital datato a telephone company's digital switch.

A major problem with this configuration is that interexchange carriersattempting to penetrate the local telephone company's territory mustlease trunk lines from the local telephone company switch to theinterexchange carrier company's network for digital traffic.Furthermore, the Internet service provider must lease a modem from thelocal phone company in the DSLAM switch and route its data through thelocal phone company's digital switch. Thus, the local phone companyleases and/or provides a significant amount of equipment, driving up thecost of entry for any other company trying to provide local telephoneservices and making it difficult for the interexchange companies todifferentiate their services. Furthermore, since DSL modem technology isnot standardized, in order to ensure compatibility, the DSL modemprovided by the local telephone company must also be provided to the enduser in the customer premises equipment (CPE). Additionally, since thenetwork is not completely controlled by the interexchange companies, itis difficult for the interexchange companies to provide data atcommitted delivery rates. Any performance improvements implemented bythe interexchange companies may not be realized by their customers,because the capabilities of the local telephone company equipment may ormay not meet their performance needs. Thus, it is difficult for theinterexchange companies to convince potential customers to switch totheir equipment or to use their services. These factors ensure thecontinued market presence of the local telephone company.

Another opportunity is for the interexchange carrier to employ wirelessmeans of reaching the local telecommunications service subscriber. InU.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/001,363, filed Dec. 31, 1997,entitled “ISD Wireless Network”, it was suggested to provide a wirelessintegrated service director for communicating with wireless subscriberapparatus. Also, from other U.S. Patent Applications, for example, in“Circuit-Switched Switching System” U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,370, issued Nov.2, 1999, it is known to provide satellite or other wireless connectionsdirectly to the local subscriber, thus bypassing the local network andthe local telephone company.

Yet another opportunity for bypassing the local telephone company is theprovision of telecommunications services over known coaxial cable orhybrid optical fiber coaxial cable television transmission systemsutilizing cable television spectrum in the downstream (toward thesubscriber) and upstream (toward the cable television headend) paths forsuch services. For example, Times Warner has been experimenting with theprovision of telecommunications services to and among cable televisionservice subscribers in various geographic regions of the country withmarginal success.

As part of this system, there is a need for improved architectures,services and equipment utilized to distinguish the interexchangecompanies' products and services. One such service is automated whiteand yellow pages directory assistance. Such service is currentlyavailable via web pages that require an internet service provider andwhich do not provide a committed data delivery rate. An additionalsituation not adequately addressed by the known prior art is the need toprovide reliable information about the geographic location and cable settop device from which an emergency 911 telephone call has been placed.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In order to provide an improved network, it is desirable for theinterexchange companies to have access to at least one of thetwisted-pair lines, coaxial cable, hybrid fiber facilities with eithertwisted pair or coaxial cable or alternate wireless facility connectingeach of the individual users to the local cable television or tolltelephone or hybrid network before the lines are routed through theconventional local telephone network equipment. It is preferable to haveaccess to these lines prior to any modem or switching technology offeredby the local telephone service providers. By having access to thetwisted-pair wires or coaxial cable or hybrid facilities entering orleading to the customer's premises, interexchange companies candifferentiate their services by providing higher bandwidth, improvingthe capabilities of the customer premises equipment, and loweringoverall system costs to the customer by providing competitive servicealternatives.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the interexchange carriermay obtain access to the coaxial cable feeding subscribers to existingcable television services, for example, at a subscriber tap or after afiber/coaxial cable hub or node in a hybrid fiber coaxial cabletelevision distribution plant. The interexchange carrier may ultimatelyprovide services via the optical fiber leaving the cable televisionheadend. The cable television set top terminal may comprise atelecommunications apparatus or a separate cable modem connectedintelligent terminal may provide such services as plain old telephoneservices, high speed Internet services, video conference services,directory services, multimedia services or other digital servicesdepending on subscriber requirements and capabilities.

A new architecture for providing such services may utilize a video phoneand/or other devices to provide new services to an end user; a residencegateway which may be an integrated residence gateway (IRG) disposed nearthe customer's premises for multiplexing and coordinating many digitalservices onto a single twisted-pair line or coaxial cable (or both); acable facilities management platform (C-FMP) disposed remote from or inthe local telephone network's central office, the subscriber loop or thecoaxial cable distribution plant for routing data to an appropriateinterexchange company network; and a network server platform (NSP)coupled to the C-FMP for providing new and innovative services to thecustomer and for distinguishing services provided by the interexchangecompanies from those services provided by the local telephone network.

As part of this system, an aspect of the invention: (1) provides whiteand yellow page directory services with the results of directoryassistance queries prioritized based upon user selectable criteria; and(2) automatically identifies the geographic location and addressablecable set top device from which an emergency 911 telephone call has beenmade.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing summary of the invention, as well as the followingdetailed description of preferred embodiments, is better understood whenread in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, which are includedby way of example, and not by way of limitation with regard to theclaimed invention.

FIG. 1A illustrates an embodiment of a hybrid fiber twisted pair localloop architecture.

FIG. 1B illustrates alternative arrangements wherein an interexchangecarrier may access a subscriber premises via an inter-exchange carrierowned or another cable television company.

FIG. 1C illustrates an embodiment of FIG. 1B where an integratedresidence gateway and coaxial cable facilities management platform(C-FMP) provide enhanced residence services via hybrid fiber coaxialcable distribution plant access.

FIG. 1D illustrates an embodiment of a hybrid fiber coaxial cable localloop architecture that shows when the C-FMP may connect within thearchitecture of FIG. 1B or FIG. 1C.

FIG. 1E illustrates an expanded view of a residence architecture forenhanced CATV/telephony services.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of an integrated residencegateway consistent with the architecture shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B.

FIGS. 3A and 3B illustrate an embodiment of a video phone consistentwith the architecture shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 4A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a facilities managementplatform consistent with the architecture shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 4B illustrates a block diagram of an embodiment of a network serverplatform consistent with the architecture shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the ISD/IRG.

FIGS. 6A and 6B are block diagrams of various frame structures which maybe used to communicate between the ISD/IRG and the FMP/C-FMP.

FIGS. 7A and 7B are examples of one signaling structure which may beused to initiate a call.

FIGS. 8-10 are various embodiments of the ISD/IRG.

FIG. 11 is an example of one protocol stack for use with the ISD.

FIG. 12 is a one exemplary embodiment of a form factor for the ISD/IRG.

FIG. 13 is an exemplary embodiment of a local house network using theISD/IRG.

FIGS. 14, 15A, 15B show various implementations of tunneling for usewith the ISD.

FIG. 16 shows a plurality of ISD/IRG connected settops in a network 500,the ISD/IRG being connected to either or both of a twisted pair orcoaxial cable facility.

FIGS. 17-18 show a remote control.

FIG. 19 shows an exemplary architecture of an settop.

FIG. 20 shows an exemplary architecture of a remote control.

FIGS. 21-24 show exemplary architectures of video screens output by asettop.

FIGS. 25 and 26 show exemplary steps for providing automated directoryassistance services.

FIGS. 27 and 29 show exemplary steps for automatically determining thegeographic location and set top device from which an emergency 911 callwas placed.

FIG. 28 schematically shows a visual indicator for directing toemergency personnel to a geographic location from which a particularemergency 911 call was placed.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Referring to FIG. 1A, a first exemplary communication networkarchitecture employing a hybrid fiber, twisted-pair (HFTP) local loop Iarchitecture is shown. This network and an intelligent service directorcontrolled set-top box are already described by U.S patent applicationSer. No. 09/001,424, entitled “ISD Controlled Set-Top Box” filed Dec.31, 1997, and that description is repeated here by way of introductionto a related and potentially overlapping or integrated architecturewhich will be described with reference to FIGS. 1B-1E. Similar referencenumerals are used throughout to denote similar elements.

According to FIG. 1A, an intelligent services director (ISD) 22 may becoupled to a telephone central office 34 via a twisted-pair wire, hybridfiber interconnection, wireless and/or other customer connection 30, aconnector block 26, and/or a main distribution frame (MDF) 28. Referringbriefly to FIG. 1B, and according to the present invention, the ISD 22is replaced by either a residential gateway 22-2 (when an interexchangecarrier partners with a cable television service provider) or anintegrated residential gateway 22-1 (when an interexchange carrier isintegrated with the cable television service provider. FIG. 1B furthershows other cable operators distribution infrastructure 70 or IEC ownedinfrastructure 74 connected to a CATV headend infrastructure 68 whichmay include an inter-exchange carrier coaxial Cable FacilitiesManagement Platform 32-1. Per FIG. 1B, the CATV headend 68 is in turnconnected to a backhaul SONET ring 42 and to various alternative servicenetworks including but not limited to IEC SS-7 based services 44,interspan, frame relay services 48 (to corporate intranets 62), and viaframe relay 48, Internet service cloud 50 or EEC core network 60 toelectronic commerce vendors 64.

Wireless communication in FIG. 1A may be via land-based intelligent basestations or by satellite. The ISD 22 and the telephone central or localoffice 34 may communicate with each other using, for example, framed,time division, frequency-division, synchronous, asynchronous and/orspread spectrum formats, but in exemplary embodiments uses DSL modemtechnology. The central office 34 preferably includes a facilitiesmanagement platform (FMP) 32 for processing data exchanged across thecustomer connection 30. The FMP 32 may be configured to separate theplain old telephone service (POTS) from the remainder of the data on thecustomer connection 30 using, for example, a tethered virtual radiochannel (TVRC) modem (shown in FIG. 4A). The remaining data may beoutput to a high speed backbone network (e.g., a fiber-optic network)such as an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching network. Theanalog POTS data may be output directly to a public switch telephonenetwork (PSTN) 46, and/or it may be digitized, routed through the highspeed backbone network, and then output to the PSTN 46.

As will be discussed in connection with FIGS. 1B-1E, an alternative orintegrated way of reaching subscriber 10 to hybrid fiber/twisted pairfacilities is via hybrid fiber/coaxial cable facilities of a cabletelevision service provider. Such an arrangement may bypass the localsubscriber loop and the local telephone switching central office or wirecenter 34 altogether. There are several varieties of hybrid fibercoaxial cable distribution facilities. In one embodiment, fiber isprovided to curb; that is, fiber reaches the subscriber tap where fromthe tap, coaxial cable is “dropped” or provided via an undergroundpedestal to the customer premises. In another embodiment, fiber reachesan active amplifier chain for providing downstream services to severalthousand subscribers. In yet another embodiment, fiber reaches aplurality of microcells of customer premises which can be served bypassive (rather than active) devices. Referring briefly to FIGS. 1-C and1-D, a cable facilities management platform (C-FMP) 32-1, 32-2, 32-3, insuch an alternative, may be located at the telephone central office, acable television headend (as per FIG. 1-B) or in the cable televisionsignal distribution plant, for example, at a fiber/coax node or hub.

Referring again to FIG. 1A, the FMP 32 may process data and/oranalog/digitized voice between customer premise equipment (CPE) 10 andany number of networks. For example, the FMP 32 may be interconnectedwith a synchronous optical network (SONET) 42 for interconnection to anynumber of additional networks such as an InterSpan backbone 48, the PSTN46, a public switch switching network (e.g. call setup SS7-type network44), and/or a network server platform (NSP) 36. Alternatively, the FMP32 may be directly connected to any of these networks. One or more FMPs32 may be connected directly to the high speed backbone network (e.g.,direct fiber connection with the SONET network 42) or they may be linkedvia a trunk line (e.g., trunks 40 or 42) to one or more additionalnetworks. Similarly, referring to FIG. 1C, remote FMP 32-2, C-FMP 32-1and a network server platform 36 are connected to SONET, for example, anOC48 ring 42 with ports 40 for connection to telephony out-of-bandsignaling SS7 network 44, ATM cloud 76 or Internet network 78, framerelay networks, interworked networks or other networks (not shown).

In either FIG. 1A or FIG. 1C, the NSP 36 may provide a massive cachestorage for various information that may be provided across the SONETnet 42 to the FMP 32 of C-FMP 32-1 and out to the ISD 22 (FIG. 1A) orresidential gateways 22-1 or 22-2 (FIG. 1-B). The NSP 36 and the FMP 32or C-FMP 32-1 may collectively define an access network server complex38. The NSP 36 may be interconnected with multiple FMPs or C-FMP's 32.Furthermore, each FMP/C-FMP 32 may interconnect with one or more ISDs 22or IRGs. The NSP 36 may be located anywhere but is preferably located ina point-of-presence (POP) facility. The NSP 36 may further act as agateway to, for example, any number of additional services.

The ISD 22 or IRG 22-1 (FIG. 1C, 1E) may be interconnected to variousdevices such as a videophone 130, other digital phones 18, set-topdevices (not shown), computers 14, and/or other devices 15, 16comprising the customer premise equipment 10. Per FIG. 1E, the IRG 22-1is shown coupled with a plurality of analog lines 15-1 to 15-4 to abusiness data services interface 17, for example, a set of V. 35interfaces, for providing various digital bandwidth services such as an56 Kbps service 17-1, 64 Kbps service 17-2, ISDN service 17-3 and T1(1.544 Megabps service) 174. An Ethernet link serves an Ethernettelephone 18-1 and the user's personal computer local area networkincluding PC 14-1 provided via telephone house wiring. The user'stelevision 19-1 and other coaxial cable fed devices are connected toCATV and enhanced services via in-house coaxial cable.

The customer premise equipment 10 may individually or collectively serveas a local network computer at the customer site. Application appletsmay be downloaded from the NSP 36 into some or all of the individualdevices within the customer premise equipment 10. Where applets areprovided by the NSP 36, the programming of the applets may be updatedsuch that the applets are continually configured to the latest softwareversion by the interexchange carrier. In this way, the CPE 10 may bekept up to date by simply re-loading updated applets. In addition,certain applets may be resident on any of the CPE 10. These residentapplets may be periodically reinitialized by simply sending a requestfrom, for example, a digital phone 18 and/or a videophone 130 to the FMP32 or C-FMP 32-1 and thereafter to the NSP 36 for reinitialization anddownloading of new applets. To ensure widespread availability of the newfeatures made possible by the present architecture, the customer premiseequipment 10 may be provided to end users either at a subsidized cost orgiven away for free, with the cost of the equipment being amortized overthe services sold to the user through the equipment.

Referring to FIG. 1D, similar reference characters are utilized todenote similar elements. While a house is depicted, any customerpremises is intended, for example, a personal residence, a multipledwelling unit or a small or large business premises. In many suchsituations, the intelligent services director (ISD) 22 or integratedresidence gateway 22-1 introduced above may be mounted to the side ofthe premises, in an accessible wire closet inside the premises or in thebasement among other places discussed herein. In a cable televisionarrangement, facility 30 coupling tap 60 to a premises is typically acoaxial cable or may comprise a CommScope or other cable manufacturerheadend cable that comprises both coaxial cable and twisted pairs, forexample, the CommScope 3-22 which provides three 22 gauge audio pair inaddition to a coaxial cable television drop. Power also may be fed downthe drop to power the ISD 22. Likewise the facility from node 61 to tap60 may comprise such a coaxial cable facility or, in a fiber to the curbarrangement, may comprise optical fiber. Similarly, the facility linkinghub 62 and node 61 may comprise an optical fiber or a coaxial cable. Ina hybrid fiber coaxial cable arrangement the facility connecting headend63 and hub 62 is typically an optical fiber and in a conventional cabletelevision system comprises a coaxial cable.

As shown in FIG. 1D, the C-FMP 32-1 may be connected to a node 61 of ahybrid fiber coaxial cable plant typically with coaxial cable in and outof the node and where active amplifier or passive devices are providedfor providing service to downstream subscribers. A C-FMP 32-2 may beconnected to a hub 62 of a hybrid fiber coaxial cable television plantwhere the fiber typically terminates and the coaxial cable link to aplurality of subscribers (not shown) begins. Also, a C-FMP 32-3 is showncoupled to the cable television headend 63 where cable televisionservice for a geographic region over a hybrid fiber coaxial cable orpure coaxial cable facility originates. If the C-FMP 32 is not locatedat the headend, hub, or node, the facility between the C-FMP 32 andthese may comprise an DSL twisted pair facility in one embodiment shownor a coaxial cable or optical fiber in another embodiment.

A known coaxial cable television tap 60 is shown where 1, 2, 4 or up to8 subscriber drop cables tie in to the coaxial cable serving downstreamsubscribers. Tap 60 comprises a directional coupler for permitting asubscriber to tap into the main downstream coaxial cable to receiveservice. When a tap is being serviced or repaired, the downstreamservice is typically interrupted for the duration of the service orrepair. It is a principle of the present invention to design the tap orthe service so that “lifeline” support may be provided to a customerover a coaxial cable facility. Such a scenario means that both serviceand power for powering a subscriber telephone device may not beinterrupted. The tap may be provided, for example, with a redundantswitchable coupler such that one, when taken out-of-service may leavethe other redundant coupler in service and power pass-through todownstream subscribers.

Power in a cable television system is typically provided for poweringactive amplification devices. Set top terminals are typically poweredfrom AC power lines within the premises. The downstream cable televisionpower is typically 90 V AC. In telephony, the line power is typically 48volts DC. Thus there is a difference between telephone and cabletelevision power services. Furthermore, the tap and drop cable fortelevision service may be over the same strand or a different strand andmay enter the premises in a different entry way than the drop wire fortelephone. House wiring systems of coaxial cable in cable television andtwisted pair for telephony may be totally different and are completelywithin the control of the subscriber, the television service providerand/or the telephone service provider. These differences must beaccounted for in design of a particular premises installation.

Referring to FIG. 2, there is shown an integrated residence gateway 22which is very similar to an intelligent service director 22 discussed inearlier U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,424, entitled “ISD ControlledSet-Top Box” filed Dec. 31, 1997. The IRG 22 may connect with a varietyof devices including analog and digital voice telephones 15, 18; digitalvideophones 130, devices for monitoring home security, meter readingdevices (not shown), utilities devices/energy management facilities (notshown), facsimile devices 16, digital audio devices via audio interface122, personal computers 14, cable television set top devices 131 and/orother digital or analog devices. Some or all of these devices may beconnected with the IRG 22 via any suitable mechanism such as a singleand/or multiple twisted-pair wires, inpremises coaxial cable and/or awireless connection. For example, a number of digital devices may bemulti-dropped on a single twisted-pair (to FMP) or coaxial cable (toC-FMP) connection. Similarly, analog phones and other analog devices maybe multi-dropped using conventional techniques. Set top cable televisionterminals 131 or personal computers utilizing cable modem bandwidthInternet services are typically coupled to IRG 22 to coaxial cable linesrun within the home. Alternatively, services are provided via anEthernet interface 119 or other high bandwidth interface.

The IRG 22 may be located within the home/business, in a wire closet, inthe basement or mounted exterior to the home/business. The IRG 22 mayoperate from electrical power supplied by the local or central office34, by power supplied by the headend 63 and/or from the customer's powersupplied by the customer's power company. Where the IRG 22 includes aTVRC or cable modem 114, it may be desirable to power the IRG 22 withsupplemental power from the home in order to provide sufficient power toenable the optimal operation of the TVRC/cable modem.

As shown in FIG. 2, in some embodiments the IRG 22 may include acontroller 100 which may have any of a variety of elements such as acentral processing unit 102, a DRAM 103, an SRAM 104, a ROM 105 and/oran Internet protocol (IP) bridge router 106 connecting the controller100 to a system bus 111. The system bus 111 may be connected with avariety of network interface devices 110. The network interface devices110 may be variously configured to include an integrated servicesdigital network (ISDN) interface 113, an Ethernet interface 119 (e.g.,for 10 Base T, 100 Base T, etc.), an IEEE 1394 “fire wire” interface 112(e.g., for a digital videodisc device (DVD)), a TVRC/cable modeminterface 114 (e.g., for a digital subscriber line (DSL) and/or cablemodem), a residential interface 115, (e.g., standard POTS phone systemssuch as tip ring), a business interface 116 (e.g., a T1 line or slowerdata speed and/or PABX interface), a radio frequency (RF) audio/videointerface 120 (e.g., a coaxial cable television connection to a set-topbox/television or to a personal computer), and a cordless phoneinterface 123 (e.g., a 900 MHZ or other unlicensed frequencytransceiver). Connected to one of the network interfaces and/or thesystem bus 111 may be any number of devices such as an audio interface122 (e.g., for digital audio, digital telephones, digital audio tape(DAT) recorders/players, music for restaurants, MDI interface, DVD,etc.), a digital phone 121, a videophone/user interface 130, atelevision set-top device 131 and/or other devices. Where the networkinterface is utilized, it may be desirable to use, for example, the IEEE1394 interface 112 and/or the Ethernet interface 119.

A lifeline 126 may be provided for continuous telephone service in theevent of a power failure at the CPE 10. The lifeline 126 may be utilizedto connect the IRG 22 to the local telecommunications company's centraloffice 34 and, in particular, to the FMP 32 or C-FMP 32 located in thecentral office 34. Lifeline 126 may connect to Tip/Ring (conventional)and may be provided as lifeline 126-1 via DSL modem 114 to twisted pairor via integral or separate cable modem 114 to coaxial cable.

A fundamental difference between an ISD and the integrated residencegateway of the present invention is the IRG's ability to receive ortransmit signals over a coaxial drop or a twisted pair drop or both. ATVRC modem and a cable modem operate according to different protocols.Typically, the twisted pair facility is terminated by a TVRC modem whichprovides available bandwidth services over a dedicated twisted pairsubscriber loop while the cable modem provides an upstream band offrequencies of approximately 5-40 Megahertz susceptible to noise ingressover the cable plant and as much as one gigaHertz of bandwidth in thedownstream direction. Both upstream and downstream bandwidth is sharedwith other upstream subscribers.

A typical cable modem, for example, one implementing a data over cableservice interface specification (DOCSIS), comprises QPSK or 16-QAMmodulation for upstream transmission and 64 or 256 point QAM fordownstream transmission. Each 6 MHZ downstream or upstream channel canprovide up to 38 Mbps data service in accordance with quality of serviceconstraints since the bandwidth is shared with other downstream andupstream subscribers. Some studies suggest that up to 200 or moresubscribers can share the bandwidth effectively. In the upstreamdirection due to various issues a 10 Mbps may be provided. In contrastto Ethernet's CSMA/CD protocol, the DOCSIS access scheme providescable/telephone operators the opportunity to fill their pipelines at 75%or greater of their theoretical capacity. Data encryption, for example,DES-based encryption/decryption, provides privacy to users of the sharedupstream and downstream bandwidth.

The ISD/IRG 22 may be variously configured to provide any number ofsuitable services. For example, the ISD/IRG 22 may offer high fidelityradio channels by allowing the user to select a particular channel andobtaining a digitized radio channel from a remote location andoutputting the digital audio, for example, on audio interface 122, videophone 130, and/or digital phones 121. A digital telephone may beconnected to the audio interface 122 such that a user may select any oneof a number of digital audio service channels by simply having the userpush a digital audio service channel button on the telephone and havethe speaker phone output particular channels. The telephone may bepreprogramed to provide the digital audio channels at a particular time,such as a wake up call for bedroom mounted telephone, or elsewhere inthe house. The user may select any number of services on the video phoneand/or other user interface such as a cable set-top device 131. Theseservices may include any number of suitable services such as weather,headlines in the news, stock quotes, neighborhood community servicesinformation, ticket information, restaurant information, servicedirectories (e.g., yellow pages), call conferencing, billing systems,mailing systems, coupons, advertisements, maps, classes, Internet,pay-per-view (PPV), and/or other services using any suitable userinterface such as the audio interface 122, the video phone/userinterface 130, digital phones, 121 and/or another suitable device suchas a settop device 131.

In further embodiments, the ISD/IRG 22 may be configured as an IP proxyserver such that each of the devices connected to the server utilizestransmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) protocol. Thisconfiguration allows any device associated with the ISD/IRG to accessthe Internet via an IP connection through the FMP/C-FMP 32. Where theISD/IRG 22 is configured as an IP proxy server, it may accommodateadditional devices that do not support the TCP/IP protocol. In thisembodiment, the ISD/IRG 22 may have a proprietary or conventionalinterface connecting the ISD/IRG 22 to any associated device such as tothe set top box 131, the personal computer 14, the video telephone 130,the digital telephone 18, and/or some other end user device.

In still further embodiments, the ISD/IRG 22 may be compatible withmulticast broadcast services where multicast information is broadcast bya central location and/or other server on one of the networks connectedto the FMP/C-FMP 32, e.g., an ATM-switched network. The ISD/IRG 22 maydownload the multicast information via the FMP/C-FMP 32 to any of thedevices connected to the ISD/IRG 22. The ISD/IRG 22 and/or CPE 10devices may selectively filter the information in accordance with aspecific customer user's preferences. For example, one user may selectall country music broadcasts on a particular day while another user mayselect financial information. The ISD/IRG 22 and/or any of the CPE 10devices may also be programmed to store information representing users'preferences and/or the received uni-cast or multicast information inmemory or other storage media for later replay. Thus, for example, videoclips or movies may be multicast to all customers in the community withcertain users being preconfigured to select the desired video clip/movie in real time for immediate viewing and/or into storage for laterviewing.

Referring to FIG. 3A, a videophone 130 may include a touch screendisplay 141 and soft keys 142 around the perimeter of the display 141.The display may be responsive to touch, pressure, and/or light input.Some or all of the soft keys 142 may be programmable and may vary infunction depending upon, for example, the applet being run by thevideophone 130. The function of each soft key may be displayed next tothe key on the display 141. The functions of the soft keys 142 may alsobe manually changed by the user by pressing scroll buttons 143. Thevideophone 140 may also include a handset 144 (which may be connectedvia a cord or wireless connection to the rest of the videophone and/ordirectly to the ISD), a keypad 150, a video camera 145, a credit cardreader 146, a smart card slot 147, a microphone 149, a motion and/orfight detector 148, built-in speaker(s) 155, a printer/scanner/facsimile152, and/or external speakers 154 (e.g., stereo speakers). A keyboard153 and/or a postage scale 151 may also be connected to the videophone130. Any or all of the above-mentioned items may be integrated with thevideophone unit itself or may be physically separate from the videophoneunit. A block diagram of the video phone unit is shown in FIG. 3B.Referring to FIG. 3B, in addition to the items above, the video phone130 may also include a signal processor 171, high speed interfacecircuitry 172 (to house wire or coaxial cable), memory 173, power supply174, all interconnected via a controller 170.

When the videophone 130 is used as a video telephone, the display 141may include one or more video window(s) 160 for viewing a person to whoma user is speaking and/or showing the picture seen by the person on theother end of the video phone. The display may also include adialed-telephone-number window 161 for displaying the phone numberdialed, a virtual keypad 162, virtual buttons 163 for performing varioustelephone functions, service directory icons 165, a mail icon 164,and/or various other service icons 166 which may be used, for example,for obtaining coupons or connecting with an operator. Any or all ofthese items may be displayed as virtual buttons and/or graphic icons andmay be arranged in any combination. Additionally, any number of otherdisplay features may be shown on the video phone in accordance with oneor more of the applications incorporated by reference below.

Referring to FIG. 4A, the FMP/C-FMP 32 may coordinate the flow of datapackets, separate voice signals from other signals, perform linemonitoring and switching functions, and/or convert between analog anddigital signals. The FMP/C-FMP 32 may process data sent from the CPE 10to the central or local office 34 by separating and reconstructinganalog voice signals, data, and control frames. The FMP/C-FMP 32 mayprocess data sent from the central or local office 34 to the CPE 10 byseparating control messages from user information, and configure thisinformation into segments that for transport across the digitalsubscriber loop. The FMP/C-FMP 32 may also terminate the link layerassociated with the digital subscriber loop.

In some embodiments, the FMP/C-FMP 32 may include an access module 70and a digital loop carrier 87. The access module 70 may include a lineprotector 71, a cross-connector 73, a plurality of TVRC/Cable modems 80,a plurality of digital filters 82, a controller multiplexer 84, and/or arouter and facilities interface 86. The digital loop carrier 87 mayinclude a plurality of line cards 96, a time domain multiplexing (TDM)multiplexor (MUX) 88, a TDM bus 90, a controller 92, and/or a facilitiesinterface 94.

During normal operations, digital signals on the customer connection 30(e.g., twisted-pair lines, coaxial cable, or hybrid facility) containingboth voice and data may be received by the TVRC/cable modems 80 via theline protector 71 and the cross-connector 73. Preferably, the lineprotector 71 includes lightning blocks for grounding power surges due tolightning or other stray voltage surges. The TVRC/Cable modems 80 maysend the digital voice, picture and/or data signals to the controllermultiplexor 84 and the digital filters 82. The digital filters 82 mayseparate the voice signals from the digital data signals, and thecontroller multiplexor 84 may then multiplex the voice signals and/ordata signals received from the digital filters 82. The controllermultiplexor 84 may then send multiplexed voice signals to the TDM MUX 88and the data signals to the router and facilities interface 86 fortransmission to one or more external networks. The TDM MUX 88 maymultiplex the voice signals from the controller multiplexor 84 and/orsend the voice signals to the TDM bus 90, which may then send thedigital voice signals to the controller 92 and then to the facilitiesinterface 94 for transmission to one or more external networks. Both therouter and facilities interface 86 and the facilities interface 94 mayconvert between electrical signals and optical signals when a fiberoptic link is utilized.

When there is a failure of the digital data link (e.g., if there is afailure of the TVRC/cable modems 80 at the FMP/C-FMP 32 or theTVRC/cable modem 114 at the ISD/IRG 22), only analog voice signals mightbe sent over the subscriber lines 30 (twisted pair or coax). In such acase, the analog voice signals may be directly routed to the line cards96, bypassing the TVRC/Cable modems 80, the digital filters 82, thecontroller multiplexor 84, and the TDM MUX 88. Thus, voice communicationis ensured despite a failure of the digital data link. The line cards 96may convert the analog voice signals into digital format (e.g., TDMformat) and send the digitized voice data onto the TDM bus 90 andeventually through the controller 92 and the facilities interface 94 fortransmission to one or more external networks. Since the ISD/IRG 22 maybe powered via the serving cable (telephone or coaxial cabletelevision), lifeline service may be provided over the cable modem orthe twisted pair tip and ring.

Referring to FIG. 4B, the NSP 36 may be variously configured to provideany number of services provided by a server such as informationservices, Internet services, pay-per-view movie services, data-baseservices, commercial services, and/or other suitable services. In theembodiment shown in FIG. 4B, the NSP 36 includes a router 185 having abackbone 180 (e.g., a fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) backbone)that interconnects a management server 182, an information/databaseserver 183, and/or one or more application server clusters 184. The NSP36 may be connected via the router 185 by a link 181 to one or moreexternal networks, NSPs 36, and/or an FMP/C-FMPs 32. Theinformation/data base server 183 may perform storage and/or databasefunctions. The application server cluster 184 may maintain and controlthe downloading of applets to the ISD/IRG 22. The NSP 36 may alsoinclude a voice/call processor 186 configured to handle call and datarouting functions, set-up functions, distributed operating systemfunctions, voice recognition functions for spoken commands input fromany of the ISD/IRG connected devices as well as other functions.

Again referring to FIG. 2, the ISD/XRG 22 will now be explained in moredetail. The ISD/IRG enables the seamless integration of voice and dataacross the telephone network. The ISD/IRG 22 utilizes leveragesinterface and networking innovations originally developed to expediteinformation retrieval via the World Wide Web. When applied totelecommunications access, these advances enable a revolutionary changein service delivery, that makes the telephone companies network a muchmore valuable asset than ever before. Coupled with the introduction oflow-cost premises devices (e.g., browser based touch-screen phones), thetechnology enables a natural and compelling link to a rich new class ofservice offerings and features such as CD quality voice, far morefriendly access to a wide range of telephony services (CLASS,conferencing, messaging, emergency services, etc.), new non-traditionalservices on an AT&T secure intranet such as Bill payment, Banking,Electronic shopping, Home-based smart card ATM transactions, Electroniccoupons, Interactive advertising/Point-casting, Corporate LAN extensionsfor Work-at-Home, Interactive multimedia telephony, High-speed access tothe Internet even without a PC, restaurant ordering, sports ticketordering, catalogue ordering, mail metering machines, directoryservices, customer services, rate tables, calling plan options, as wellas self provision new services, get credit for wrong number calls,vastly reducing the number of service representatives required.

The ISD/IRG 22 performs intelligent multiplexing, dynamic bandwidthallocation, and routing of voice and data and may also include advancesignal processing for enabling voice activated commands. It may bepossible to give the video phone of FIG. 3A away for free so that allhouse-holds regardless of income level or desire to purchase a personalcomputer will have access to the vast information resources of theInternet, an interexchange carrier's such as AT&T's networks, and/orthird party networks including those providing pay per view (PPV) moviecontent and broadcast networks. It is anticipated that the video phoneconcept together with the ISD/IRG, FMP/C-FMP, and NSP of the presentinvention will revolutionize the delivery of telephony services andprovide a quantum leap in the paradigm of telecommunications, improvingthe quality of life of interexchange carrier customers while turning thecopper loop or the coaxial cable drop into their homes into anincreasing necessity for all users.

For high end residential consumers who want more convenience andsimplicity in their daily lives and convenient access to moreinformation devices coupled to the ISD/IRG provide, for example: easierdelivery of a wider range of telephony services (e.g., customer care,marketing, operator services) with cost savings due to automation; newservice opportunities such as interactive electronic catalog shoppingfrom the home, and advertising; ability to offer ultra fast Internetaccess to every household, penetrating even those without a PC unliketraditional voice/touch tone telephony access; high fidelity voice andmusic; touch screen and/or voice activated customer interface;asymmetric high speed transport of data to the home with the asymmetriccharacter of the link and apportionment of that bandwidth variabledepending on the amount of traffic; new service opportunities such as3rd party bill payment including paper-less bill payment, banking,obtaining smart card cash in an ATM transactions, electronic shoppingfrom the home, electronic coupons, advertising, electronic review andpayment of bills, calling plans, class of services, as well as otherservices and plans; Interactive video teleconferencing; state-of-the-artnetworking for Work-at-Home; private line services; Call Connectionincluding the self scheduling of conference calls without the need foran operator as well as initiation of interactive calls with white boardaugmentation using an appropriate applet downloaded from the NSP; classservices invoked, for example, via icons and prompts in a natural mannerwithout requiring memorization of numerical codes; navigation & accessfor voice, e-mail, and fax messages; obtain operator services without anoperator, credit for wrong number, rate table, etc.; define profile forpointcast services; purchase products advertised on TV via synchronizedordering screen with television or PPV shows; Multimedia Enhanced VoiceCalls, interactive voice & data response applications & info- on-demand;Support for work-at-home via virtual WAN; Screen pops for message/callalerting; graphical call management using touch and/or a mouseinterface, including, for example call setup/bridging capabilities andpoint-and-click/tap-and-drag conferencing graphical use interfaces toinitiate POTS calls, personal registry, mobility manager, callscheduling, call me back standard messages, personal assistant;Universal Multimedia Mailbox including a common interface for fax,voice, text, audio, and/or audio/visual images; 7 kHz high fidelityvoice; asymmetric high speed transport with dynamic bandwidthallocation; residential LAN interface and associated local area networkwithin the home; interactive video teleconferencing, display of webpages for customers placed on-hold, and other applications as discussedherein.

The service in accordance with aspects of the present invention makesthe phone or coaxial cable TV lines a conduit for a wide variety of highrevenue service offerings, allows the differentiation of local telephoneand long distance telephone services, significantly reduces operationcosts, extracts additional performance benefits from the imbedded loopplant, makes maximum use of the existing network infrastructure, anduniquely leverages new technology. Aspects of the present invention willenable a revolutionary change in service delivery, which can greatlyimprove the quality of people's lives, and make the telephone network amuch more valuable asset than ever before. When coupled with theintroduction of low-cost premises devices (e.g., touch-screen phones),the technology enables a natural and compelling interface to rich newclasses of service offerings for all telephone users regardless of theirability or desire to afford a personal computer or learn. Thusinterexchange carriers such as AT&T can reduce the cost of their ownbilling while making it easier for the customer to pay the bill.Additionally electronic billing services can be offered to othercompanies.

The ISD/IRG 22 may be physically located on the premises side of theprotector block. In exemplary embodiments as shown in FIG. 2, theISD/IRG 22 terminates the twisted-pair loop or coaxial cable or bothfacilities either leased from the local exchange carrier or obtainedfrom the cable television service provider on the network side and thepremise equipment and associated networks on the premises side. TheISD/IRG 22 may operate to aggregate the diverse traffic from thecustomer premise equipment onto a single stream for transmission overthe loop to the twisted pair or cable Facilities Management Platform(FMP) and to de-multiplex the traffic from the FMP/C-FMP.

A basic Premises Distribution Network (PDN) 500 for one exemplaryembodiment of a typical residential application of the ISD/IRG 22 isshown in FIG. 5. The premise distribution network 500 may include one ormore Ethernet connections 500 for connecting a plurality of devices suchas a number of personal computers 14A, 14B, a vision phone, cable settop terminal and/or other devices. Further, the premise distributionnetwork 500 may include any number of conventional analog lines 505(e.g., Tip/Ring (T/R) phone lines), each having one or more associatedanalog phones (e.g., 15A-15 n), and/or associated PCs with modem and/orphone cards. Further, the premises distribution network 500 may includeany number of ISDN lines 506, each having any number of digitalappliances such as ISDN compliant devices and/or video phones 130. Thepremises distribution network 500 may use existing twisted pairtelephone line, a coaxial cable line and/or may utilize a special cableto facilitate CATV, Ethernet and/or other LAN connections. Where thevideo phone 130 may share the same LAN as a connected PC 14A,prioritization software in the LAN driver gives priority to video and/oraudio transmissions to and from the video phone to reduce latency timeand unpredictable delays. Alternatively, the video phone 130 may becoupled via a dedicated ISDN connection, a dedicated ethernetconnection, and/or another dedicated connection or coaxial cableconnection to the ISD/IRG 22. The video phone may have an integratedanalog phone for life line support. Alternatively, one of the analogphones serves the function of providing lifeline support. Further, aninternet telephony phone (not shown) may provide lifeline service via acoaxial drop to the home. Where the video phone 130 includes lifelinesupport, it is preferred to transmit data to the phone in a band above 7kHz using ADSL like modem technology.

In exemplary embodiments, the ISD/IRG 22 multiplexes traffic from thevarious components of the PDN 500 (e.g., Ethernet, Screen Phone,Tip/Ring, ISDN, coaxial house cable) either between other devices on thePDN and/or onto DSL/cable modem 114 for transport over loop twisted pairto the Central Office or coax toward the cable television headend. TheDSL/cable modem may be constructed using any of the techniques describedin the applications incorporated by reference below. For example, thereis some advantage in providing an integrated DSL/cable modem with eithertwisted pair or coaxial connectors where, for example, centralcontroller capabilities may be shared.

Within the scope of the current document, the term xDSL will be used torepresent any member of the DSL family. This family comprises, HighSpeed Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL), Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line(ADSL), Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) and Very high datarate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL). This list is not limited to themembers described herein, since changing technology adds more DSLschemes.

The ISD/IRG 22 may execute any number of additional telephony functionsusing known techniques such as Packetization of voice for all telephonecalls, Tip/Ring Borscht functions, default to Central OfficeBattery/Tip/Ring to provide lifeline service during power failure,overvoltage Protection, ringing, supervision, answer and incomingcall/ringing supervision, generation of call progress tones (e.g., dialtone, busy, ringback, invalid number, etc.), various coding such as 7KHz G.722 coding for Electra called parties, 3.3 KHz mu-law coding fornon-ISD enabled parties, transmit messages reporting DTMF, on hook/offhook/flash hook events, support for voice dialing and enablement ofspecial calling features (e.g., through the use of processor 102 whichmay include signal co-processor 102A and/or a high performancecontroller such as the 8960), provision of dial tone with time-out forvoice dialing service, coding/forwarding voice commands (e.g., to avoice processor in the FMP/C-FMP and/or NSP.

The data link protocol of the DSL modem may be variously configured toinclude incorporate Forward Error Correction for traffic unsuited tore-transmission such as voice traffic. Additionally, the data linkprotocol may organize the aggregate data stream created by multiplexingdownstream channels, duplex channels, and maintenance channels togetherinto blocks, attaching an error correction code to each block. Thereceiver then can correct errors that occur during transmission up tothe limits implied by the code and the block length. The data linkprotocol may also provide sufficient interleaving to correct errors dueto impulsive noise but supporting low latency for voice traffic, createsuperblocks by interleaving data within subblocks to allow the receiverto correct any combination of errors within a specific span of bits. Itmay be desirable to tailor the interleaving interval to the latencybudget for voice applications in DSL modems utilized to carry voice asin the present invention.

The packet handling in the present system may be variously configured.For example, in the CPE-Network direction, the processor 102 may beconfigured to act as a packet handling subsystem to processes framesfrom the FMP and to generate DSL frames going to the FMP. The ISD/IRGand the FMP/C-FMP include DSL/cable modems (e.g., TVRC/DOCSIS standardcable) modems to terminate the link layers associated with the DSL orcoaxial segment of the connection. In a similar manner as the FMP/C-FMP,the processor in the ISD/IRG may be configured to reconstruct the IPv6packets from DSL frames and then separates IP packets containing voicefrom those containing data and from those containing signaling. In theISD/IRG, speech packets from the Packet Handling subsystem may bedelivered to the residential interface for output to one or more analoglines to create virtual phone lines using the upper bandwidth of the DSLmodem (e.g., 40 Khz to 1 Mhz) in a similar manner as thepacket-to-circuit translation subsystem which may be utilized in theFMP/C-FMP. The processor 102 in the ISD/IRG 22 may also be configured togenerate signaling packets which may be forwarded to the FMP/C-FMP forlater utilization in either an in-band or out-of-band routing subsystemsuch as a conventional subscriber signaling subsystem (e.g., TR 303).Similarly, the processor 102 in the ISD/IRG 22 may include a subscribersignaling subsystem as part of an external routing subsystem. In thismanner, packets received from the FMP/C-FMP in the network-CPE direction(including voice, data, video, and control packets) may bedemultiplexed, reformatted with an appropriate protocol, and output toan attached peripheral device connected to the premise distributionnetwork 500.

In the network to CPE direction, the processor 102 may be configured tore-construct IPv6 packets from DSL frames, and separating IP packetscontaining voice from those containing data from those containingsignaling. This process may involve, for example, multiplexing (at theIP packet level) voice, data and subscriber signaling packets bound fora single DSL link with IP packets mapped onto DSL frames.

The processor 102 may also include one or more signal processors 102Aand/or voice processor to perform various MPEGII coding/decodingfunctions, codec functions, voice recognition functions,encryption/decryption, etc. The processor 102 may also be configured toperform various protocol conversion functions such that data havingprotocols used on a device connected to the premise distribution networkmay be efficiently transmitted to and from the FMP/C-FMP using anappropriate transmission protocol. Additionally, the processor 102monitors the devices connected to the premise distribution network andstores information concerning which devices are currently in use. Inthis manner, where there is an incoming call, the ISD/IRG has theintelligence to know which CPE is in use and which CPE is not in use. Asa result, if there is an incoming call, the ISD/IRG will not send aringing tone to any CPE that is already in use, but will route the callto another device that is available. Further, where there is a choice ofa plurality of phones and/or other devices to route the call, theISD/IRG may review activity detected on the motion sensors on anyattached motion sensing devices such as those which may be present in avideo phone 130 and ring a phone which is most convenient to the user.As an alternative, all available phones will be rung, with the usergiven the option to switch between incoming lines.

In an exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 5, where an incoming callarrives at the ISD/IRG 22, the control 510 rings one or all of theattached phones. Where a user answers a first phone (e.g., 15A), theutilization of this phone is recorded. Thereafter, the user may continuetalking on this phone and an off-hook status is indicated. Where anothercall comes in, the user may choose to answer this call via aconventional method such as “call waiting” and/or using multiple lines.Further, the answering machine (described in an attached application)may be configured to indicate that the user is receiving an incomingcall at the moment and provide an on-hold menu as discussed in theapplications incorporated by reference below. The control 510 may beconfigured to have a plurality of calls on-hold and toggle between thesecalls by depressing a DTMF key and/or the hang-up actuator.Alternatively, a digital phone and/or video phone 130 may have anynumber of lines with a name, address, and phone number associated witheach of the incoming callers. Thus, the residential interface moduleallows multiple virtual analog phone lines to be multiplexed on a singletwisted pair phone line. Further, one of the phone lines may be providedwith life line support.

Interconnected to the ISD/IRG may be a protector block 26 (for lightningand overvoltage protection) which is used for impedance matching. Theprotector block 26 may also act as a demarcation of the customer premiseand the local loop transmission network. Copper twisted pair and/orcoaxial cable may be utilized to connect the protector block and a CATVheadend or a telephone Main Distribution Frame (MDF) as the maintransmission medium in the local loop.

The DSL/cable modems shown as 114 may be implemented using a TetheredVirtual Radio Channel (TVRC)/DOCSIS specification cable modem asdiscussed in the applications incorporated herein by reference. The TVRC(Tethered Virtual Radio Channel) engine may be implemented using asimultaneous voice-data modem which may be a full-duplex VariableRate-Adaptive Digital Subscriber Line (VR-ADSL) modem. The modem maytransmit and receive the modulated voice+data bit stream via the twistedpair. The modem uses discrete multi-tone (DMT) modulation to achieve atleast 1.5 Mbps data rate in both directions. Some of the TVRC enginefunctions include forward error control (Reed Solomon), channel coding(Turbo or Wei Convolution), TVRC spreading, echo cancellation and analogtransmit/ receive line interfacing. The TVRC modem may be implementedusing one or more programmable DSPs which may be utilized to provide themodem transmit FFT and/or receive IFFT engine. However, the embodimentsof aspects of the instant invention are not limited to the use of TVRCmodulation technology. However, TVRC may be desirable as an alternate tointerleaving in order to overcome impairments such as noise andinterference and which results in unacceptable delays. (A typical cablemodem has already been described above.)

The processor 102 in the ISD/IRG 22 may be configured to discriminatebetween the various forms of traffic and to route this traffic to anappropriate device. Where high priority voice and/or video isdistributed across the interface, the ISD/IRG may include one or morepriority queues disposed in the SRAM and/or DRAM 103, 104. There may bedifferent priority queues for each connected device on the premisedistribution network (including any attached device described withregard to FIG. 2 or discussed herein). Additionally, there may bedifferent queues for each device in both the transmit and receivedirection. Further, control and signaling information may be assignedvarious levels of priority. A similar queue structure may also beimplemented in the FMP/C-FMP. In one exemplary embodiment, the queuesgive priority to signaling information, and voice information for thevarious attached telephones. If a queue is in danger of overflow, flowcontrol mechanisms may be utilized by the ISD/IRG and/or FMP/C-FMP.Voice data is accessed first using an appropriate queuing scheme such aspriority fair weighted queuing or another suitable scheme. In additionto queuing, bandwidth may be varied so that more DSL frames are assignedto voice and/or video than data. Further, asymmetric DSL protocols maybe dynamically implemented such that more bandwidth may be allocated toone direction or the other as necessary. Where one ISD/IRG 22 is servingas the node for, for example, a seven way conference call, the outgoingbandwidth for the node may need to be increased relative to the incomingbandwidth. However, where a PPV movie and/or Internet file is beingdownloaded, the bandwidth may be reversed such that more bandwidth isavailable from the network to the CPE equipment. Thus, asymmetric highspeed transport of data to the home with the asymmetric character of thelink and apportionment of that bandwidth variable depending on theamount of traffic results in a substantially more flexible platform toimplement advanced services to the user. Multiple modem protocols may bedownloaded into the DSL modem dynamically to chose the best protocol fora particular dynamic bandwidth allocation to maximize the amount ofthrough put.

For example, with reference to FIGS. 6A and 6B, information may bemultiplexed into one or more DSL frames in order to dynamically allocatebandwidth. In one exemplary embodiment, where data is being input to oneof the connected data devices (e.g., a PC), and a voice call comes in, adynamic allocation of bandwidth may occur. Assume that 1 Mbps isavailable for information transfer. Prior to the incoming call, all 1Mbps may be completely used for the data transmission. However, as soonas a voice call comes in, since voice has a higher priority than data, a64 Kbps channel is deallocated from data usage and is allocated forvoice. If a second voice call comes in, then another data channel willbe deallocated from data usage and allocated for voice. As a voice callgets terminated, then the allocated voice slots will be reallocated touse by data and/or another voice channel. For example, as shown in FIG.6B, voice call 4 V4 is terminated and the bandwidth is reallocated toD3. Accordingly, as the bandwidth is reallocated, the header may beupdated to reflect the new bandwidth allocation. This allocation mayoccur in both the CPE to network traffic and network to CPE traffic.Additionally, as slots are added to CPE to network traffic, slots may bedeallocated to network to CPE traffic implementing a dynamic asymmetricbandwidth allocation. Hence, the system dynamically allocates bandwidthin real time to maximize information transfer. Where individual packetsare used to transport voice and data between the ISD/IRG 22 and theFMP/C-FMP 32, an individual channel does not need to be allocated. Voicepackets are simply given priority over data packets in the transfer.Therefore, silence periods may be used to the advantage and a higheroverall bandwidth occurs. Data is simply stored in the buffer and/orslowed in its transfer using standard flow control where voice haspriority. In aspects of the present invention, bandwidth may beallocated on a per-frame basis. By contrast, conventional systems onlyallocated bandwidth at the time a secession is initiated—and onceinitiation has been completed, bandwidth allocation cannot be changedwithout tearing down the call. However, in aspects of the presentinvention, bursty data may be accommodated more efficiently since theburst data rate may be accommodated via dynamic bandwidth allocation.

The DSL/cable modem 114 may be variously configured to supportingtransport over 18000 foot loops at following rates exceeding 1Mbits/second, or coaxial cable or hybrid facilities of any length andmay include adapting duplex and downstream bit-rates to the needs of thecurrent traffic such that more bandwidth is provided to the upstreamand/or downstream and/or between various devices based on an intelligentbandwidth allocation algorithm. The DSL/cable modem may provide asingle-tone DMT mode for low power operation during idle periods toavoid re-synchronization at next service request and enable “always on”functionality. The always on and/or virtually always on functionalityallows voice/data calls to be established virtually instantaneouslywithout long delays. The virtually always on functionality allows thechannel bandwidth to adapt to the current needs of the system tominimize power consumption, reduce thermal dissipation, and generateless interference. For example, if no device is currently beingutilized, only a very low bandwidth channel is required. Accordingly, byreducing the bandwidth available across the loop, it is possible toimprove overall performance for other lines.

The DSL/cable modem must share upstream and downstream bandwidth overcoaxial or hybrid fiber/coaxial facilities but has the advantage ofbeing able to allocate upstream and downstream demand for services inpriority with other coaxial cable subscribers or, if both twisted pairand coaxial facilities are provided, to allocate to one or the otherdepending on priority.

The present invention discloses a local loop architecture that canovercome many of the problems associated with either a twisted pair orcoaxial cable architecture alone. Amongst the claimed advantages is theability to have multiple appearances of a call on a single twisted pairor coaxial cable channel. The architecture also allows data and voice tobe mixed and bandwidth can be dynamically allocated in real time.

To illustrate the interaction between the various components of theinstant invention, a voice dialing scenario will be described. When asubscriber picks up the telephone and if no digits have been dialedafter a specified period of time has elapsed, the ISD/IRG may startdigitizing the voice information into 64 Kbps μ-law PCM data. Thesamples may be interpreted locally using processor 102 and convertedinto commands, and/or stored in a wave file for later transmission. Forexample, where the voice commands are saved, they may be subsequentlytransmitted to the FMP/C-FMP over a signaling channel. On receipt by theFMP/C-FMP, the FMP/C-FMP may either interpret the commands (e.g., usinga controller in the controller and multiplexer 84), and/or forward theinformation to the NSP for further processing. In the NSP, the commandsmay be interpreted using known voice recognition technology. The NSP mayattempt to authenticate the request by ensuring that the subscriber doesindeed have a subscription to the voice dialing service. The NSP maythen determine the identity of the subscriber by looking at the addressin the IP field of the packet. The NSP can therefore interpret theinformation in the wave files and take the appropriate action.

In one illustrative example, assume that subscriber John wanted to callanother subscriber Paul. The NSP may attempt to determine who is Paul asdefined by John. Once the telephone number for John has been determined,the NSP may inform the FMP/C-FMP to set up a call to John's number. Insome configurations, this my be done by the FMP/C-FMP using the TR303interface (as shown in FIG. 7A and FIG. 7B), for example, by sending asignal to a SLC to request the local Serving Office to tell the latterthe appropriate ports to use for setting up the call. The FMP/C-FMP mayalso include its own DTMF and tone generator for signaling. Theinclusion of a DTMF tone generator in the FMP/C-FMP and/or ISD/IRG hassignificant advantages in that a voice dialing service may be providedby the interexchange companies and there is no need to pay for the LocalExchange Carrier (LEC) for providing such a service. Similar services,such as speed dialing, that the LEC provides can now be made availablelocally using the ISD/IRG and/or FMP/C-FMP.

In the case where there is an incoming call, say from the PSTN, theFMP/C-FMP may obtain signaling information from the SLC. The informationmay be dispatched over the signaling channel to the NSP. The NSP mayinstruct the FMP/C-FMP with information on how the call should beterminated. On receiving this message, the FMP/C-FWP may send theappropriate signaling message to the ISD/IRG. The ISD/IRG may beconfigured to know which phones are in use and which ones are not. As aresult, the ISD/IRG may apply ringing voltage to a phone that is not inuse and/or take other remedial action as discussed above, e.g., using acall waiting signal.

The ISD/IRG may be configured to facilitate multiple appearances ofcalls on a single twisted pair or within a coaxial cable televisionchannel to integrate voice and data traffic. The ISD/IRG is unlikeconventional system that uses bandpass filters or splitter to separatevoice and data. The ISD/IRG provides a local smart hub interface for alllines in the home as well as providing digital communicationcoordination among different devices in the home. The ISD/IRG may beconfigured for various functions including an alarm system, utilitymeter monitoring, standard POTS phone systems such as tip ring, ormultiple tip rings, or multiple tip rings assigned to a single number,and/or multiple tip rings assigned to unique numbers, detectiongeneration and conversion of DTMF tones, ring generation, off hookgeneration, and other call progress indication, and/or a businessinterface such as a T1 line, and/or other analog and/or digital lines.

Of course, other embodiments of the ISD/IRG will be apparent to thoseskilled in the art. For example, as shown in FIGS. 8-10, a secondexemplary example of the ISD/IRG is shown.

Further, various implementations of the ISD/IRG may be utilized indifferent implementations. For example, settop 513 may be coupled to anysuitable interface such as the IEEE 1394, RF audio/video interface 120,ethernet interface 119, etc. A TV may be coupled to the settop.Additionally, a DAT, DVD and/or other audio device 515 may be coupled tothe ISD/IRG using a suitable interface.

A typical digital set top device comprises a controller, QPSK or QAMtransmitters and receivers and BEG encoding/decoding . The settop devicemay communicate with a high resolution HDTV television or an NTSC lowresolution television or a personal computer or web-TV type device. Theset-top may be coupled to high speed Ethernet or to coaxial cableaccording to the present invention and include features of the ISD/IRGas appropriate.

Referring to FIG. 11, various protocol stacks may be utilized totransmit the voice and data. For example, a voice signaling stack suchas in-band voice over ATM and/or other voice signaling stack may beused. Additionally, a ethernet and/or other IP stack may be utilized.

Referring to FIG. 12, the ISD/IRG may be included in a network interfaceunit. The network interface unit may be variously mounted either insideand/or outside of the house. Where a DSL/cable modem and/or ISD/IRG isincorporated in the NIU 600, it may be desirable to mount the unitexternal to the home to allow access for service and to upgrade theISD/IRG without entering the user's home. Alternatively, the NIU 600 maybe provided within the home where power is more readily available andwhere temperature is more stable. Auxiliary power may be provided via anoutlet within the house via a direct power link 612 and/or via astep-down transformer 613 connected to the ISD/IRG 22 via one or moretwisted pair phone lines from within the house to outside of the houseto the NIU via a spare twisted pair 614. The auxiliary link allows easyretrofit of existing NIUs 600. Phone lines and/or other interface linesmay be provided from the ISD/IRG 22 to the house via lines 620 (e.g.,twisted pair cabling). The cordless interface 123 of the ISD/IRG 22 mayinclude an antenna 630, e.g., a 900 MZZ or other unlicensed frequencyantenna mounted to the exterior of the NIU 600. The antenna 630 may beused as a cellular base station for other wireless devices associatedwith other customer premises. Further, a cable 630 may be associatedwith RF audio/video interface 120 in the ISD/IRG 22. The cable 630 maybe coupled to a set-top and/or a TV 514.

In operation, the ISD/IRG may be variously configured. For example, theISD/IRG 22 may be utilized as a local house network. For example,referring to FIG. 13, an overall network 600 showing the ISD/IRGfunctioning in one embodiment of an overall house network. For example,a first ISD/IRG 22B may have associated digital phones 18A-18N, analogphones 15A-15N, and computers (e.g., personal computers) PC1-PCN. TheISD/IRG 22B may be coupled to a FMP/C-FMP 32B. The FMP/C-FMP 32B may inturn be coupled to a plurality of FMPs 32A, 32C, and one or morenetworks such as the Internet 581, the PSTN 46, and/or a private networksuch as a SONET network 42. The FMP/C-FMP 32B may also be interconnectedwith a NSP 36 as discussed in detail above. The FMP 32A may be connectedto a local equipment company's network 580, which may in turn be coupledto the PSTN 46. The LEC network may, for example, comprise a 5ESSswitch. The LEC 580 may have a plurality of associated analog 15 and/ordigital phones (not shown). Similarly, the FMP 32 c may have anassociated ISD 22C, coupled to one or more analog and/or digital phones15, 18.

In operation, the network 600 may include a local area network formedusing ISD/IRG 22B as a server. ISD/IRG 22B may act as a server/networkcontroller for local area network LAN A having a plurality of attachedPCS. For example, many homes today have a plurality of PCS disposed indifferent rooms of the house, but not interconnected. By using theISD/IRG and standard Ethernet software protocol drivers and associatedEthernet cards, the ISD/IRG 22 may function as a network server and/orcontroller. In this manner, by simply plugging into an existing phoneconnection, PCS in the house may share date among themselves, among oneor more PCS and the Internet 581, between one or more PCS and one of thedigital phones 18A-18N (including a video phone). In this manner, thecommon household problem of how to share information among computers issolved.

Additionally, the problem of obsolete software is also solved. Forexample, the ISD/IRG may be configured to download data from the NSP viaany suitable protocol such as the use of a proprietary protocol and/or atunneling protocol (e.g., PPTP) to have direct access to information onthe NSP. Tunneling may be implemented using any suitable protocol suchas point-to-point protocol shown in FIG. 14, 15A, and 15B.Point-to-point tunneling was developed by Microsoft and may includetunnels wrapping PPP packets in IP layers. PPTP tunneling may be eitherclient initiated or client transparent. As alternative, tunneling may beimplemented using layer two forwarding developed by CISCO. Layer twoforwarding uses layer two protocols such as frame relay and ATMtunneling to provide a point-to-point connection between a remotecaching server such as the NSP 36 and the ISD/IRG 22.

For example, the NSP could host a kids game section which has thousandsof different children's programs. The NSP supplied programs may appearas one of a plurality of attached devices to the local home network. Auser in the home may execute one of these programs by simply accessingan appropriate icon and/or by installing a driver for the program.

Further, because the ISD/IRG has high bandwidth access to externalnetworks, the ISD/IRG may serve as an Internet gateway. For example, byconfiguring the ISD/IRG as an Internet gateway server, the ISD/IRGallows every computer in the home high-speed access and E-mailcapabilities with the Internet. The LAN may also include inexpensivenetwork computers without expensive disk drives and peripherals allowingthe average home owner to purchase many inexpensive network computers,e.g, one for each member of the family. Similarly, WEB TV boxes coulduse the same LAN network LAN A to obtain high speed access to theInternet. The ISD/IRG may be variously configured as a proxy server,such that each of the devices connected to the IP proxy server mayutilize TCP/IP protocol and hence access a single IP connection from theIP server located in the ISD/IRG across the connection to the centraloffice. Where the ISD/IRG is configured as an IP proxy server, the ISDmay accommodate any number of additional devices that are not TCP/IPdevices or Internet literate. In this manner, the ISD/IRG may have aproprietary interface out to the device, such as the set top box, thepersonal computer, the digital telephones, the VisionPhone, or other enduser devices and yet access the power of the Internet through theISD/IRG services. So the protocol between the ISD/IRG and the end userdevices may be conventional protocols, such as CEBus for meter reading,ISDN for digital telephones and VisionPhones, fire wire, IEEE 1394 forconsumer electronic devices such as video DVD players and/or othersimilar devices.

In addition to the forgoing, the ISD/IRG as a proxy server may beconfigured to allow an alternate long distance communication path toremote users, bypassing long distance companies networks. For example,where a reduce quality service is acceptable, telephony over Internetmay be utilized allowing, for example, analog phone A15 to communicatewith analog phone 15 over the Internet. This may be accomplished byconfiguring the ISD/IRG to establish certain connections over theInternet either on a continuous basis and/or on a manually enabledbasis, for example, using PC1 and/or vision phone 130. Thus, the userwould have the option of communicating with other phone customerswithout long-distance tolls using telephony over the Internet.

FIGS. 16-20 depict an integrated remote control and phone according toan embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 16, theISD/IRG 22 interfaces with a set-top device 131, which typically is acontroller for a television set 360 on which it sits. The ISD/IRG 22 maybe powered at 90 V AC fed via the coaxial cable television drop or via48 V DC power from the twisted pair. The coaxial cable drop and/twistedpairs are shown entering ISD/IRG 22 at the left. The ISD/IRG 22 may becoupled to the set top devices 131 using any suitable interface such asEthernet interface 119 (FIG. 2), IEEE 1394 interface 112, ISDN interface113, Business Interface 116, and/or RF audio/video coaxial Interface120. The ISD/IRG 22 may or may not include an MPEG decoder. In exemplaryembodiments, the MPEG decoder may be disposed in set-top 131 to minimizethe bandwidth of the ISD/IRG interfaces. Where the MPEG decoder isdisposed in the set-top device 131, MPEG packets may be downloaded fromthe NSP 36, via the network 42, through the FMP/C-FMP 32, through theISD/IRG 22 and into the settop 131. In exemplary embodiments, videoprogramming is being continuously multicast across network 42 andselectively directed to one or more ISD/IRG devices 22 responsive to aprofile input by a viewer and/or responsive to commands by a viewer.

Packets broadcast across a network typically include a programidentifier PID. The program identifier, in conjunction with one or moreprogram guide applets may be utilized to select a particular programcontent from one of a plurality of programs being multicast. Forexample, the NSP may down load an applet (e.g. a JAVA based applet) forenabling a program guide such as a proprietary program guide or astandard program guide such as that provided by Starsight. The programguide application runs on the set-top(s) 131 and allows the user toselect particular programs on which to view. The request is thenforwarded to the NSP 36 where it may be logged with any appropriatebilling information. The NSP 36 may be configured to include a pluralityof program tables mapping PID values and/or values output by the programguide from the settop 131 with identifying information to match theprogram requested with programs PIDs being broadcast. Thereafter theprogram is downloaded via the FMP/C-FMP 32 to the ISD/IRG 22 to thesettop 131. In this manner a log of requests can be recorded and billingrecords maintained.

Where a plurality of set-tops 131 are located in the home, each set-topmay request different data. Where the CPE is a very long distance fromthe central office/headend, it may be desirable to have more than onetwisted pair connecting the ISD/IRG to the FIP/C-FMP in order to ensurethat a plurality of programs will be simultaneously available. Onecoaxial drop may be provided for downstream services and a twisted pairmay be used for upstream services or different spectrum may be allocatedin a coaxial facility for downstream and upstream as is known in theart.

As a further embodiment, a user may select a particular program storedon the NSP. Since the output to each home is in a star configurationwith the FMP/C-FMP connected to many users, the user may select from amultitude of movies (thousands to unlimited). The movie may either bedownloaded in real time to the settop 131 and/or downloaded and storedon a DVD device or other DAT.

In addition to the forgoing, any of the video phone functions and/orset-top functions described herein may operate on the TV under controlof the settop and/or ISD/IRG in a similar manner as with the video phone130. Accordingly, even absent a video phone 130, the settop 131 may beoperated in conjunction with the track ball 311 and select key 312 onremote control 200. Thus, the user may select restaurant information,pay bills, select ads, order tickets (e.g., via pop-up windows duringcommercials for a local sports team which enable the viewer to purchasetickets for a subsequent home game), and/or perform any of the otherfunctions associated with the video phone 130 described herein viaremote control.

In addition to the forgoing, where the ISD/IRG 22 is configured as aproxy server, the settop 131 may operate as a WEB TV enabled device. Webpages may be accessed at extremely high rates over the DSL or coaxialcable modem connection giving users a pleasant and easy to use WEBbrowsing experience.

Referring to FIGS. 17 and 18, remote control handset 200 communicateswith a television set-top device 131 in a manner that will be describedbelow. It will be recognized that set-top device 131 could be a modifiedcable television tuner/descrambler and could be located next to thetelevision set 360. It will also be recognized that set-top device 131could control other video appliances, such as a VCR, DVD, DAT and/or beincorporated into the video appliance which it controls. The set-topdevice may also be very inexpensive since a tuner is not necessary, onlya MPEG decoder and a controller. Accordingly, since the set-top receivesethernet data, the settop may comprise an Ethernet card built intocontroller 402 as well as an MPEG decoder built into controller 402.Additionally, the RF receiver 410 and/or RF antenna 132 is not necessarywhere all programming is received via the ISD/IRG. Additionally, wherethe RF transmitter in the ISD/IRG 22 is utilized, the RF transmitter inthe settop is not necessary. Further, it should be understood that thecamera in set-top 420 may be optional.

Referring to FIGS. 17 and 18, handset 200 has a case 202 which housesthe electronics (FIG. 20) that enable handset 200 to communicate withset-top device 131 via infrared (IR) and/or radio frequency (RF) in amanner that will be described herein. Case 202 has a front face 204, arear face 206, a top end 208, a bottom end 210, a left side 212, and aright side 214. Front face 204 may have a user interface comprisingcontrol keys for activating various functions. For example, front face204 may have a standard alphanumeric telephone keypad 216 and ancillarycordless telephone function keys, such as REDIAL, AUTO DIAL, FLASH, HOLDand telephone ON/OFF keys. The alphanumeric keypad 216 may also controlvideo/audio functions in conjunction with ancillary video/audio functionkeys, such as POWER, volume (VOL ), channel (CH), last channel swap(LAST CM), and TV MUTE. Other keys may select the device to becontrolled, such as TV, VCR, and/or DVD. Additional keys (MENU,ENTER/RECALL, REMOTE VIDEO, AUDIO, LOCAL VIDEO, PIP, OFF) activatecertain on-screen programmning, adjustment and control functions fortelephone usage, video viewing, etc. Further, any of the hot/controlbuttons, soft keys, and/or touch screens referred to herein may beutilized in conjunction with the TV/remote combination. Also front face204 may include one or more openings for a microphone 218 and/or aloudspeaker 220 which enable the handset to function as a telephone withthe loudspeaker held to the user's ear and the microphone adjacent theuser's mouth. The weight of the handset preferably is more or lessevenly distributed so that it feels balanced and is comfortable to holdwhen used as a telephone or as a remote control.

Several of the keys on the handset provide, in conjunction withappropriate software, for example, running in set-top controller 402,and/or controller 102 in the ISD/IRG 22, unique control of the incomingand outgoing (local) video and/or audio components of a telephone call.For example, the VIDEOPHONE MENU key 310 may display on the handset 200may display any of the videophone menus described in the applicationsincorporated by reference herein. In place of the disclosed touchscreen, the present invention contemplates the use of a track ball 311or other screen navigation device in conjunction with SELECT key 312 topoint to and activate various virtual “buttons” that are displayed onthe screen to form a graphical user interface. Phone services accessedby the phone menus may include caller ID, speed dials, etc. The REMOTEVIDEO key 300 displays/removes the remote caller's video image on thetelevision screen, while the LOCAL VIDEO key 301 displays/removes thelocal caller's video image on the television screen. Further,picture-in-picture or PIP keys 302, 303 for the remote and local videoimages enable the local caller to view himself, the remote caller orboth, or even display one or both callers along with video programmingfrom another source such as the set-top device 131. An OFF key 304electronically disables and/or mechanically shutters the local caller'svideo camera (which may be located, e.g., on top of the television set)so that the local caller can decide whether he should be seen by theremote caller. A DIAL ON-SCREEN NUMBER button is provided forexpeditiously dialing a number displayed during an advertisement orpossibly through an on-screen directory service. In accordance with theinvention, a HANDSET SPEAKER ON/OFF button 350 is provided for quickdeactivation and activation of the handset speaker and overlay of thevoice call audio signal on the video signal sent to the video appliancevia set-top device 131.

In accordance with one aspect of the power-saving features of theinvention, the AUDIO key 305 is associated with the remote caller andallows the local caller to direct the audio portion of the remotecaller's signal either to the handset loudspeaker 220 or to the speakersystem of the video appliance 360 for amplification and broadcast overthe television speaker or remote speakers. Where the audio is broadcastover the television speaker, the phone audio volume may be controlledvia phone volume controls 306. Thus, the phone audio may be overlaidover the TV audio output with the relative volume or muting of eachcontrolled separately. By using the TV loudspeakers instead of thespeaker in the remote control, the battery life in the remote control isconserved. For enhanced ergonomic function, the TV volume control 307and the phone volume control 306 may be located on the side of the phone(FIG. 8) to allow adjustment of the relative volume of the TV and/orphone audio while talking on the phone. Where surround sound isavailable, the audio from the phone could be made to come from adifferent location such as behind the viewer whereas video sound is infront of viewer. Alternatively, the handset may be provided with acontroller which will automatically mute or lower the volume of the TVwhen an incoming call is received or answered.

During use as a telephone, voice and DTMF tone communication throughset-top device 131 and/or ISD/IRG 22 may be accomplished via a radiofrequency link, preferably at a frequency of 900 MZZ or other unlicensedfrequency, by means of an antenna 132 on set-top device 131 and/orcordless interface 123 on the ISD/IRG 22, and an antenna 222 which maybe completely concealed within case 202. Antenna 222 is located alongone side of case 202, and the electronic components within the case areappropriately shielded by a metal clam-shell structure (not shown) toprevent unwanted interference from the radio frequency transmissions.Although it is preferred to completely conceal antenna 222 within case202, a partially concealed antenna, or an external antenna, could beused instead. Where an external antenna is used, it is desirable to havemultiple infrared diode (IRD) ports to prevent the external antenna frominterfering with a single IRD port.

While all communication functions could be effected via the radiofrequency link or an infrared link, it is preferred that audio/videocontrol and commands be communicated through the infrared link whileaudio communications and/or commands are carried out via the antenna.Set-top device 131 has an infrared detector 133 on the front of its basewhich receives infrared signals from any of four infrared emittingdiodes 224, 226, 228 on handset 200. These diodes preferably have broadbeams and together afford maximum infrared coverage for a hand-heldremote control device. The diodes may be located on one, two, three, orfour faces at and near the top end of case 202 so they will not berendered inoperative by being covered by the user's hand, which normallyengages the lower half of the handset, or as the user turns.

Conventionally located on the top end 208 of case 202 is an infraredemitting diode 224. When the top of handset 200 is aimed generally atset-top device 131, infrared signals emitted by diode 224 are receivedby detector 133.

For added versatility and convenience, an infrared emitting diode 226 islocated on each side of case 202. Signals emitted by one of theseside-mounted diodes are received by detector 133 when the user holds thehandset with one side generally facing the set-top device 131, such aswhen the user is holding the handset to his ear during a telephoneconversation, generally facing the television set where the remotecaller's video signal may be displayed, and wishes to adjust a videofunction. Having a diode on each side of the handset insures infraredcommunication regardless of which ear is placed adjacent loudspeaker220. Thus, volume may be adjusted while the user speaks on the phone.One of the side-mounted diodes 226 also may come into play when thehandset is held more or less horizontal but the user turns away from thetelevision set while depressing a command key.

Further, an additional infrared emitting diode 228 is located on therear face 206 of case 202. Signals from this rear-mounted diode arereceived when the rear of the handset is held generally facing theset-top device 131. This would occur when the user turns his head awayfrom the television set while holding the handset to his ear. It alsoallows the handset to function when it is held up by the user for easyviewing of the controls on the front face 204.

Handset 200 preferably is powered by a rechargeable battery or powersupply 404 (FIG. 8). The battery may be recharged when the handset isnot in use by placing it in a mating recharging cradle in set-top device131 and including a pair of hot contacts which mate with contacts oncase 202. Conventional circuitry in set-top device 131 preventsovercharging of the battery. If the set-top device is integrated intothe video appliance which it controls, such as a video receiver, asimilar recharging cradle could be provided on the top or the side ofthe appliance housing. Alternatively, or in addition, a remoterecharging cradle powered by line current could provide a moreconvenient charging location for the handset when not in use.

Although handset 200 is illustrated as generally flat and rectangular inshape, it may take any form as long as it is convenient and comfortableto use as described. The handset could, for example, be ergonomicallycontoured to more closely fit the hand and the side of the head, e.g.with a curved dumbbell face.

Referring now to FIGS. 19-20, the architecture of the integrated remotecontrol and telephone and the set-top device 131 are schematicallydepicted. Set-top device 131 includes a set-top controller 402, whichmay be a microprocessor-based control unit for executing a series ofinstructions stored in memory unit 406. Information corresponding tovarious screen displays associated with the video phone interface mayalso be stored in memory unit 406. Controller 402 is powered by powersupply 404 which is preferably a transformer for providing the voltagesInecessary to operate controller 402 from standard household current.

RF receiver 410 receives a signal, which corresponds to the voice andDTMF tone communication transmitted from handset 200 and provides acorresponding signal to set-top controller 402. RF antenna enhancessignal reception of RF receiver 410. Local video is provided via videocamera 420 which may be housed within set-top device 131 or,alternatively, installed as a separate device with a video feed to aport (not shown) in set-top box 131. IR receiver 414 receives an IRsignal, which corresponds to audio/video control and commands, fromhandset 200 and provides a corresponding signal to controller 402.Controller interprets the corresponding signal and executes appropriateinstructions according to a predetermined instruction set stored inmemory 406.

Video broadcast signals are directed via IEEE 1394 link from the ISD totuner 408 which is controlled by controller 402 and generates a VIDEOOUT signal usable by the video appliance. In accordance with theinvention, the VIDEO OUT signal may include an audio signal overlaywhich corresponds to a caller's voice. The ISD Ethernet link alsocommunicates with controller 402 in order to provide various interactiveservices described in the applications incorporated herein by referenceherein. These services may include the processing of incoming voice anddata communications. Incoming voice signals are sent to set-topcontroller 402 via the ISD Ethernet link. Controller 402 generates asignal to RF transmitter 422 which sends the incoming voice call signalvia RF link to the handset. RF receiver 410 and RF transmitter 422 maybe appropriately duplexed to prevent the reception by RF receiver 410 ofthe signals transmitted by RF transmitter 422.

Referring to FIG. 20, the architecture of the handset 200 includeshandset controller 502 which is capable of executing instructions storedin memory 504 and writing thereto. A rechargeable power supply 306provides power to operate controller and all circuitry associated withhandset 200. As described above, handset 200 is equipped with at leastthree infrared transmitters 516 which generate IR signals correspondingto signals or instructions sent from handset controller 502 forreception by infrared receiver 414 on set-top device 131. Similarly, anRF transmitter is provided for generating RF signals corresponding tothe instructions or signals sent by handset controller 502 to RFreceiver 410 on set-top device 131.

Telephone signals corresponding to incoming voice calls are received byhandset via RF receiver 522 and broadcast to the listener via handsetspeaker 518. In accordance with the present invention, however, thehandset speaker 518 may be deactivated via user interface 508, which, asexplained above, includes an AUDIO on/off button 305. Handset controller502 may be provided with appropriate instructions such that, when AUDIObutton 305 is set to deactivate handset speaker 318, or when telephonevolume buttons 307 are depressed to reduce the handset speaker volume tozero, the incoming voice call audio signal is no longer broadcast fromthe set-top device 131 to the handset, but instead is merely overlaid onthe video signal sent from set-top device controller 402 to tuner 408.This feature of the invention results in significant energy savings andprolonged life of the handset power supply 506.

The caller's voice signal may originate from the set-top device or froma separate wireless phone base unit, or even from a cellular network itwill be recognized that the invention finds application to each of thesewireless telephonic systems. For example, as described in theapplications incorporated herein by reference, the caller's voice signalmay originate from the same network as the video broadcasts, in whichcase the caller's voice signal originates from the set-top device 131.In that case, the handset 200 would not require electronic circuitry forrelaying the caller's voice signal back to the set-top device when thehandset speaker is deactivated. Instead, the handset controller 502would be adapted merely to transmit a control signal via transmitters516 to the set-top device 131 such that set-top controller 402 overlaysthe voice signal. Since the caller's voice signal is already beingprocessed through set-top controller 402, there is no need to relay thecaller's voice signal from the handset to the set top device 402.

On the other hand, the voice signal may originate from a source otherthan set-top device 131, such as a separate wireless phone base unit(not shown). In such a case, for the audio signal to ultimately beoverlaid on the video signal to the video appliance 360, the handsetcontroller 502 would be adapted to operate handset transmitters 516, orpossibly an RF transmitter (not shown), to convey signals recognized asa telephone audio overlay commands by the set-top device controller 402.The controller 502 would also be adapted to subsequently forward thecaller's voice signal from the handset 200 to the set-top box 131 viatransmitters 516 . Thus, the caller's voice signal would be transmittedfrom the base station to handset 200 via RF or IR link, processed byhandset controller 502, and, in response to a user selecting theappropriate control keys on the user interface 508, be relayed to theset-top box using an IR or RF link in response to the user selecting apredetermined volume level for the handset speaker 518. In this manner,the invention may be utilized to conserve energy stored in the handsetpower supply 506 when it is desired to deactivate the handset speaker518 and utilize the video appliance speaker to broadcast the caller'svoice. It will be recognized that this aspect of the invention isapplicable to wireless phone handsets which may or may not incorporateset-top device remote control features.

One telephony/cable television problem being addressed by the presentapplication is the provision of lifeline support for telephoning over acable distribution system. Referring again to FIG. 1D, the lifelinesupport may be divided into several sections including a head endsection, a distribution network section and the home/customer premisessection. Where a lifeline support is provided to a cable system, thepower necessary to drive the lifeline devices needs to be providedthrough the coaxial cable to the home. One option for providing thispower and lifeline support is to connect the telephony into a hub 62 ofthe cable network and only provide lifeline support from the hub 62downstream through the nodes 61 to the house network. The average powerrequirement for a two line telephone is 3.1 watts, accordingly, thelifeline power distribution network will require at least 3 watts perhousehold distributed throughout the network. In a typical network thereare 20 nodes or less per hub 62 and 500-1000 houses per node 61. In thecurrent system there can be many as 500-1000 houses per node 61 or 3,000watts per node 61 which may be excessive. Accordingly, it may desirableto drop the number of houses per node 61 to 200 or less making 600 wattsper node. The cable system currently uses as a standard component atwo-drawer file cabinet size box which is positioned at the base of apole and has batteries in the bottom of the box and a power supply forconverting either 110 or 220 V AC into 90 volts AC for supply out ontothe cable network. One solution for lifeline is to use the existingdistributed battery backup systems as described above distributedthroughout the cable network to provide lifeline power into the homefrom the batteries in the file cabinet size batteries backup supplies.In this manner, by placing the battery backup supplies downstream fromthe node and the hub, the node and the hub no longer need to be poweredfrom the head end. Additionally, in this way lifeline support can beprovided into the node or the hub with a fixed number of twisted pair oflines which go directly to the local exchange and provide lifelinesupport on a selected statistical basis.

With regard to FIG. 1D, there are several alternatives for providinglifeline support into the cable system. In a first alternative, thelifeline support is provided to the node 61 where the node is coupled tothe FMP/C-FMP through, for example, a DSL twisted pair of connection. Inalternative embodiments, the DSL twisted pair of lifeline connection maybe interconnected through a hub 62 or through the head end 63.

The different alternative embodiments between connecting the lifelinesupport through either the node, the hub or the head end may beinfluenced by the particular type of distribution facilities that thecable network employs. For example, where a node is employed on atelephone pole it may be a simple matter to connect the twisted pair ofDSL lifeline support directly into the node on the telephone pole.However, where the node is buried underground, it may be more difficultto provide lifeline DSL support into each of the individual nodes. Inthese embodiments, it may be useful to provide the DSL lifeline supportinto the hub as opposed to into the node. Where the DSL lifeline supportis provided into the hub there may also be additional room to providecircuitry within the hub whereas the space requirements within the nodeare extremely limited because these are often pole-mounted. In yetalternate embodiments, the DSL lifeline support may be provided into thehead end, however, providing the lifeline support into the head endoften requires that the entire cable distribution network remain poweredin the event of a power failure. In yet alternate embodiments in somecities the cables are provided underground in manholes. In thisembodiment, either the node, hub or head end connected DSL may beappropriate because the telephone cables are typically co-located withthe cables in the manholes and may be interconnected to provide lifelinesupport. So the foregoing discussion is centered primarily on how tointerconnect the phone system lifeline support with the cable network.

The following discussion discusses how to pass power through each of thedifferent components on the cable network. The first discussion willcenter on the individual tap modules and how to pass power from the nodethrough the individual tap modules to the homes. In each of theindividual taps the cable system has power in the cable at 90 volt 60cycle power which is distributed through the center of the coaxial cablewhereas the signal is distributed along the outer edge of the centercoaxial cable in a skin effect since the high frequencies aredistributed towards the outer edge of the cable. In passing the powerthrough each of the taps, the cable is actually severed at each tap anda circuit board is interconnected between the input and output of thetap allowing for the power to be filtered as well as isolation of eachof the individual houses coming off the tap providing the high frequencycable system into the house. In the most preferred embodiments, the faceplate may be removed without affecting power for all downstream homesfrom the tap. In this manner, highly reliable power systems may beutilized to provide continuous power downstream of the tap while theindividual components on the tap are being serviced.

The tap is comprised of a series of splitters which simply split thepower into each of the individual tap sections. So as a minimum, the taphas to be redesigned such that the tap continually passes power to thehouse over the tap drop regardless of whether the faceplate is removedthrough the tap as being serviced. In this manner, the tap may includefirst and second circuit boards with the first circuit board providingnothing more than a power takeoff and signal takeoff of the main board.Another option is the. . . . Today there exists cable with coax andtwisted pair and power leads all within a single cable, some of whichalso include fiber. Accordingly, in one aspect of the invention, comingout of each of the taps is a specialized cable that includes not only acoaxial connection but also a power connection and/or a twisted pairconnection. Commscope is a supplier of customized cable that will allowtwisted pair and coax cables to coexist. The options with the taphousing for cable or pedestal mounting are as follows: in a firstembodiment the tap housing would simply have a single printed circuitboard having a plurality of connectors on the circuit board and an EMIand hermetic seal, circular seal around each of the connectors so thatwhen the top of the tap housing was placed and screwed onto the bottomof the tap housing, the hermetic seal would seal each of the coaxialconnectors and thus, the top could be removed from the tap housingwithout affecting the printed circuit board disposed therein. Inalternate embodiments, the coaxial cable outputs or taps could belocated in the back, top or side of the tap housing and thus not need tobe removed when the faceplate was removed. One advantage of the IPtelephony is that the telephone call circuit is not broken just becauseyou removed and replaced the plate or a tap circuit board in a cabledistribution network. The IP telephony call will often allow you tobreak for several seconds to several minutes without actually losing thecall.

As an alternate embodiment, a GFI or other ground fault interruptconnector may be located in a tap housing or the ISD/IRG to preventinjury to small children or maintenance worker who is unplugging anddisconnecting the cable system where power is provided to the homethrough the tap. If you do get a ground fault interrupt, the nextquestion is how do you reset it. In one embodiment you may have itautomatically reset after a period of 5 or 10 minutes. In alternateembodiments you may have to have a technician come out and open the tapor ISD/IRG box and manually reset the ground fault interrupt. In stillalternate embodiments the ground fault interrupt could be reset by theuser with a selection panel at the ISD/IRG. As an alternate embodiment,it is possible to locate the ISD/IRG device directly in the tap wherepower is already located. Or the cable may be passed through the ISD/IRGand the tap located where the ISD/IRG would be located. If the ISD/IRGis combined into the tap 60, a single ISD/IRG device can be shared with3 or 4 houses thus drastically reducing the cost of the ISD/IRG perhouse.

Further, the cable running to each of the individual houses who want tobe ISD/IRG enabled, can be a hybrid coaxial/twisted pair cable such asan F59 HEC/3-22 made by Commscope of Hickory, N.C.

In an alternative embodiment, it may be appropriate to migrate theISD/IRG in the direction of the cable set top terminal 131. This hasadvantages of providing the services and control of television servicesin the vicinity of the control of telephony services but assumes thatthere exists a commonality of facilities (twisted pair and coaxialcable) in the vicinity of the set top terminal.

One of the major problems currently with the return path is that thesignal from each of the homes is at vastly different levels. Thedifferent levels on the return path signal is due to a number of factorssuch as differences in the in-home wiring schemes between each of theindividual houses, differences in the distance from the tap to the houseand differences in the distance from the particular tap the house isconnected to the node. Normally, the return path is consolidated at thenode and not at each of the individual tap locations. Additionally,where the return path for each of the individual homes is returned at adifferent frequency, the different frequencies will also have differentdelays. One manner of alleviating many of these problems is to place theISD/IRG within the tap. In this manner, when return path signals aresent back to the ISD/IRG, the ISD/IRG has an opportunity to adjust thesignal strength and frequency of the return signal such that when thesignals arrives at the node they are all approximately the same leveland therefore can be multiplexed and returned to the head end in a moreefficient manner. The invention also has the advantage in that no poweris required to be supplied to each of the individual houses to power theISD/IRGs. In this configuration, the power is provided only to the tapand downstream of the taps to the houses is provided simply lifelinesupport on a twisted pair and the cable is not powered. Thus, there isno need to provide 90 volts or step down 90 volts downstream to thehouse, thus safety is increased as well as the overall efficiency of thesystem. Additionally, by having an active tap device, it is possible topacketize all telephone traffic at that point and thus the additionalamount of bandwidth is substantially conserved since the IP packets andthe voice can be compressed and simply put on the return path with allof the other IP packets from any other house utilizing the return pathas well as data. The voice could be packetized in IP packets just likedata and the return path could be indistinguishable between voice anddata. Placing the ISD/IRG in the tap also may provide additionalefficiency in that the downstream data may be packaged for a single taplocation and have the tap thereafter make the distribution between eachof the individual houses associated with the tap. In this manner, agreater level of efficiency can be provided over the overall cablenetwork in both the upstream and downstream transmission directions.Another option is to include with the ISD/IRG and/or individually aseparate amplifier in each tap so that the signal is amplified andfiltered at each tap on the high frequency cable system. In this way, itis possible to avoid a lot of amplifiers distributed throughout thesystem.

For multi-dwelling units, it is also possible to use similar concepts.In a multi-dwelling unit, a line is run either from a node or from a tapwith a splitter into a multi-dwelling unit then within themulti-dwelling unit there are a plurality of taps located in a patchboard in the basement for supplying each of the individual dwellingunits. For example, a particular apartment may have an apartmentamplifier which brings the signal in off of one tap or a node andamplifies that signal and then redistributes the signal to each of theindividual apartments. In this manner, the amplifier may also include ahigh performance ISD/IRG for supplying PBX and other user services toeach of the multi-dwelling units. The high performance ISD/IRG andintegrated apartment amplifier, provides the following functionality;cable television service, high speed Internet access, telephony, dataservices, alarm and monitoring and all of the other services with havein the 49 previous applications. The ISD/IRG in the multi-dwelling unitalso provides lifeline support and may include a battery backup. Theapartment house can also be wired with the hybrid coax/twisted paircable such that each of the individual dwelling units gets not onlycable television but also its telephony services directly from the highperformance integrated ISD/IRG apartment complex amplifier. The ISD/IRGin either the tap or in the home environment, the ISD/IRG will besubstantially the same as the prior ISD in the applications filed Dec.31, 1997 with the exception that the ADSL modem/lifeline will bereplaced by a new cable modem/lifeline configuration. Accordingly, thecable modem will need a bypass mechanism whereby a lifeline support canbypass the cable modem and power the critical phone devices within thehome. This can be configured substantially the same way as the lifelinebypassing the ADSL modem in the prior applications.

As an alternative embodiment, tap encapsulation of the cable modem willallow a single cable modem to support a plurality of different userssuch that it may be desirable to include in a cable television tap acable TV based modem which supports multiple users. In this manner, asingle ethernet interface/controller can control the ethernet connectionup to as many as 8 different homes. Thereafter, each of the users ineach of the different homes may utilize the ethernet connection tocouple a cable modem to the home. In still further embodiments, whereeach of the individual users telephony and/or data is distributed overthe cable network, it is desirable to encrypt this data to prevent eachof the different users from having access to all other users' telephonyand data. Thus, it may be desirable to also include an encrypter in thetap.

Currently, a cable modem requires approximately 10 watts of powerconsumption. This power consumption is extremely high for lifelinesupport and does not include the additional power consumption requiredby a IP telephony. Thus, it seems that lifeline support may requirebypassing of the cable modem. In this manner, a new solution is requiredsuch as allocating the lowest 4 megahertz of the bandwidth from the tapto the home for lifeline support for the telephone. If the lowest 4megahertz is allocated to lifeline support for the telephone with anassociated voltage implied on this cable, it may be possible not topower the cable modem or to power only the portion of the cable modemsuch as the QAM modulator A to D converter down converter and televisiontuner necessary to modulate the 4 kilohertz bandwidth onto the upstreamcable transmission path. One issue is that the splitters in the home orlocated proximate to the home need to be configured to pass the lower 4kilohertz for lifeline telephony. If the splitters are not configured,they need to be redesigned and implemented with wide bandwidth splittersto include the lower 4 kilohertz for lifeline support. If we are runninga lifeline POTS line in the lower 4 kilohertz, the tap may also berequired to include a voltage converter to have 48 volt power to thecoax cable connection to the home. Essentially one concept is to haveall the NIU's go into a sleep cycle 50% of the time and only look forringing or data on a periodic basis and. Thereby all of the powerrequirements on the entire system are substantially reduced in that theNIU is only wakened up when it is addressed. So it can be statisticallymanaged such that if a highly unusual number of people on a particularnode try and pick up the phone, the system can provide a warning messagethat the system is currently overloaded and all the circuits are busyand please try back later. The same thing could be utilized forbandwidth limitations whereby for IP telephony could handled on astatistical method and if the bandwidth is exceeded, it could ask theuser to try back later.

For lifeline support an alternative embodiment is to power a lowbandwidth amplifier and provide a reduced operational mode wherebylifeline support is sent back at a low bandwidth 4 kilohertz providedover a cable system. One way for implementing this is for the nodesand/or the hub to detect when power has failed on a particular drop lineand to implement a lifeline capability for that drop line whereby eachtelephone will be allocated a 4 kilohertz segment until power on thatdrop line came back online. In this manner, lifeline could be supportedwith minimal voltage provided to each of the telephones and powerconsumption. The power supply at the node, hub and/or network interfaceunit may detect when power is eliminated or goes down and put itselfinto a power-down mode with reduced capabilities. The point is that youcannot have the system such that when it comes back up powered that youdrop the telephone call, so the requirement is to maintain the telephonecall either in the down mode or the if the power returns. So it may berequired to use just a single amplifier and/or a single circuitry forhandling those services. The safety issue is currently solved bylimiting the 90 volts to 20 milliamps downstream to the house.

Referring to FIG. 25 a user interface is provided for accepting adirectory assistance query as shown at 2500. The user interface may beof the type disclosed in FIGS. 2, 3A, or 21. Other suitable interfacesmay also be used, such as, an audio interface capable of performingspeech recognition and natural language processing.

Based upon a query entered by a user, directory assistance informationis searched, and the search results are prioritized based upon userselectable criteria, such as, the proximity of the geographic locationof the search results to the geographic location from which the querywas initiated, as depicted at 2502, which is defined in more detail inFIG. 26. The prioritized search results are then communicated to theuser via the user interface as shown at 2504. The results could bedisplayed visually or provided aurally.

Referring to FIG. 26, if CATV head end 63 is broadcasting directoryassistance information downstream, set top device 513 may scan thebroadcasted information based upon the query and prioritize the searchresults, as depicted by the 2600 and 2602. Regardless of whetherinformation is being broadcast by head end 63, a database at head end 68may be searched as depicted by the yes branch from 2604. In the eventthat a directory assistance server at head end 63 will search adirectory assistance database, a unique address of the cable set topdevice 513 is appended to the query entered by the user as depicted at2606. The query and the address are then transmitted to the computerizeddirectory assistance server as depicted at 2608. The directoryassistance database is then searched based upon the transmitted query,and the results are prioritized based upon, for instance, the set topaddress as shown at 2610. The database could use any of various tagssuch as the first three digits of the telephone number, the zip code, orother suitable tags for determining the proximity of the geographiclocations of the search results to the location from which the query wasinitiated. The search results and the address are then transmitted fromthe server to the addressable set top device 513 as shown at 2612.

Referring to FIG. 27, a geographic location associated with a set topdevice 513 is stored at head end 63. The geographic location is basedupon the tap 60 to which set top 513 is initially coupled as shown at2700. Upon detecting at the head end 63 that an emergency 911 call hasbeen placed, the previously stored geographic location and the addressof set top device 513 are used to identify the geographic location andthe particular set top device from which the emergency 911 call wasplaced as depicted at 2702 and in more detail in FIG. 29. A visualindication may be provided at the geographic location from which the 911call was placed in order to direct emergency personnel to thatparticular location as shown at 2704. The visual indication could be alight, such as a strobe light, that could be activated by tap 60, forinstance. A flashing strobe light 2800 is shown schematically in FIG.28. Residences 1, 2, and 3 and poles 2802-1, 2802-2, and 2802-3 uponwhich taps 60 could be installed and/or a visual indicator are alsoshown. Preferably, such taps 60 and visual indicators are installed sothat end users cannot move the them.

FIG. 29 depicts exemplary steps for carrying out step 2702 in FIG. 27. Aunique identifier for each tap is stored at cable head end 63 as shownat 2900. Upon receipt of an emergency 911 call at the head end, the headend queries tap 60, originally associated with the set top box fromwhich the 911 call was made to determine whether the set top device isstill coupled to the tap that it is expected to be associated with asdepicted at 2902. If the set top box has been moved and is no longercoupled to the tap 60 to which it is expected to be coupled, then headend 63 transmits a message to the set top device through which the 911call was placed requesting the set top box to notify the tap coupled tothat set top device to notify the head end of that tap's geographiclocation as shown at 2904 and 2906.

The following applications are hereby incorporated by reference:

1. A Hybrid Fiber Twisted-pair Local Loop Network Service Architecture,U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,360, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

2. Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for use in the Hybrid Fiber Twisted-pairLocal Loop Network Service Architecture, U.S. application Ser. No.09/001,425, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

3. The VideoPhone, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,905, filed Dec. 31,1997;

4. VideoPhone Privacy Activator, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,909,filed Dec. 31, 1997;

5. VideoPhone Form Factor, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,583 filedDec. 31, 1997;

6. VideoPhone Centrally Controlled User Interface With User SelectableOptions, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,576, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

7. VideoPhone User Interface Having Multiple Menu Hierarchies, U.S.application Ser. No. 09/001,908, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

8. VideoPhone Blocker, U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,474, issued on Sep. 7, 1999;

9. VideoPhone Inter-com For Extension Phones, U.S. application Ser. No.09/001,358, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

10. Advertising Screen Saver, U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,583, issued on Jul. 4,2000;

11. VideoPhone FlexiView Advertising Information Display for VisualCommunication Device, U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,520, issued on Apr. 24, 2001;

12. VideoPhone Multimedia Announcement Answering Machine, U.S.application Ser. No. 09/001,911, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

13. VideoPhone Multimedia Announcement Message Toolkit, U.S. applicationSer. No. 09/001,345, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

14. VideoPhone Multimedia Video Message Reception, U.S. application Ser.No. 09/001,362, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

15. VideoPhone Multimedia Interactive Corporate Menu Answering MachineU.S. Pat. No. 6,226,362, issued on May 1, 2001; Announcement,

16. VideoPhone Multimedia Interactive On-Hold Information Menus, U.S.Pat. No. 6,020,916, issued on Feb. 1, 2000;

17. VideoPhone Advertisement When Calling Video Non-enabled VideoPhoneUsers, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,361, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

18. Motion Detection Advertising, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,355,filed Dec. 31, 1997;

19. Interactive Commercials, U.S. Pat. No. 6,178,446, issued on Jan. 23,2001;

20. Video communication device providing in-home Catalogue Services,U.S. Pat. No. 5,970,473, issued on Oct. 19, 1999;

21. A Facilities Management Platform For Hybrid Fiber Twisted-pair LocalLoop Network, Service Architecture, U.S. application Ser. No.09/001,422, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

22. Life Line Support for Multiple Service Access on SingleTwisted-pair, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,343, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

23. A Network Server Platform (NSP) For a Hybrid Fiber Twisted-pair(HFTP) Local Loop Network Service Architecture, U.S. Pat. No. 6,229,810,issued on May 8, 2001;

24. A Communication Server Apparatus For Interactive Commercial Service,U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,344, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

25. NSP Multicast, PPV Server NSP Based Multicast Digital ProgramDelivery Services, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,580, filed Dec. 31,1997;

26. NSP Internet, JAVA Server and VideoPhone Application Server, U.S.Pat. No. 6,044,403, issued on Mar. 28, 2000;

27. NSP WAN Interconnectivity Services for Corporate TelecommutersTelecommuting, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,540, filed Dec. 31,1997;

28. NSP Telephone Directory White-Yellow Page Services, U.S. Pat. No.6,052,439, issued on Apr. 18, 2000;

29. NSP Integrated Billing System For NSP services and Telephoneservices, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,359, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

30. Network Server Platform/Facility Management Platform Caching Server,U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,419, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

31. An Integrated Services Director (ISD) Overall Architecture, U.S.application Ser. No. 09/001,417, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

32. ISD/VideoPhone (Customer Premises) Local House Network, U.S.application Ser. No. 09/001,418, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

33. ISD Wireless Network, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,363, filedDec. 31, 1997;

34. ISD Controlled Set-Top Box, U.S. application Ser. No. 09/001,424,filed Dec. 31, 1997;

35. Integrated Remote Control and Phone, U.S. application Ser. No.09/001,423, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

36. Integrated Remote Control and Phone User Interface, U.S. applicationSer. No. 09/001,420, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

37. Integrated Remote Control and Phone Form Factor, U.S. applicationSer. No. 09/001,910, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

38. VideoPhone Mail Machine, U.S. application Ser. No. 60/070,104, filedDec. 31, 1997;

39. Restaurant Ordering Via VideoPhone, U.S. application Ser. No.60/070,121, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

40. Ticket Ordering Via VideoPhone, U.S. application Ser. No.09/218,171, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

41. Multi-Channel Parallel/Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes AndTrellis Coded Modulation Encode/Decoder, U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,387, issuedon Jul. 11, 2000;

42. Spread Spectrum Bit Allocation Algorithm, U.S. application Ser. No.09/001,842, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

43. Digital Channelizer With Arbitrary Output Frequency, U.S.application Ser. No. 09/001,581, filed Dec. 31, 1997;

44. Method And Apparatus For Allocating Data Via Discrete MultipleTones, U.S. Pat. No. 6134,274, issued on Oct. 17, 2000;

45. Method And Apparatus For Reducing Near-End Cross Talk In DiscreteMulti-Tone Modulators/Demodulators, U.S. application Ser. No.08/997,176, filed Dec. 23, 1997;

In addition, the following 22 applications, filed concurrently herewithDec. 1998, are hereby incorporated by reference:

1. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,283, entitled “Coaxial Cable/TwistedPair Cable Telecommunications Network Architecture” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

2. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,286, entitled “Set Top IntegratedVisionphone User Interface Having Multiple Menu Hierarchies” filed Dec.31, 1998;

3. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,281, entitled “Coaxial Cable/TwistedPair Fed, Integrated Residence Gateway Controlled, Set-top Box” filedDec. 31, 1998;

4. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,285, entitled “A Network ServerPlatform (NSP) for a Hybrid Coaxial/Twisted Pair Local Loop NetworkService Architecture” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

5. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,287, entitled “A FacilitiesManagement Platform for a Hybrid Coaxial/Twisted Pair Local Loop NetworkService Architecture” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

6. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,290, entitled “Intercom forExtension Phones Using an ISD in a Cable Environment” filed Dec. 31,1998;

7. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,288, entitled “Video PhoneMultimedia Video Message Reception” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

8. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,289, entitled “Cable Connected NSPFor Telephone White-Yellow Page Services and Emergency 911 LocationIdentification” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

9. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,282, entitled “A Network ServerPlatform for Providing Integrated Billing for CATV, Internet, Telephonyand Enhanced Bandwidth Services” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

10. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,277, entitled “Integrated HighBandwidth Communication System” filed Dec. 31, 1998;

11. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/223,321, entitled “Automatic ServiceSelection for [NRCS]Neighborhood Residential Cordless Service” filedDec. 30, 1998;

12. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,300, entitled “Method forProvisioning Service in A High Bandwidth Multimedia Local Access” filedDec. 31, 1998;

13. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/09/223,317, entitled “Method andApparatus for Billing [Subscribers with]a Neighborhood Cordless Service”filed Dec. 30, 1998;

14. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/223,318, entitled “Method and Apparatusfor Over-theAir Activation of Neighborhood Cordless Services” filed Dec.30, 1998;

15. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/223,316, entitled “NeighborhoodCordless Service Call Handoff filed Dec. 30, 1998;

16. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,289 entitled “Method and ApparatusFor Providing Uninterrupted Service in a Hybrid Fiber Coaxial System”filed Dec. 31, 1998;

17. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/223,567, entitled “User Proactive CallHandling” filed on Dec. 31, 1998; ABANDONED

18. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,276, entitled “Lifeline Service forHFCLA Network Using Wireless ISD” filed on Dec. 31,1998;

19. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,299, entitled “Method ofConsolidating Mail in a High Bandwidth Multimedia Local Access Network”filed on Dec. 31, 1998;

20. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,278, entitled “One Number Follow MeFor High Bandwidth Multimedia Local Access” filed on Dec. 31, 1998;

21. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/224,274, entitled “One Touch ConferenceInitiation” filed on Dec. 31, 1998; and

22. U.S. application Ser. No. 60/114,317, entitled “Wireless Call Hold”filed on Dec. 31, 1998.

This application is number 7 in the immediately preceding list.

In addition, the following two patent application are herebyincorporated by reference:

1. U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,326 issued on May 9, 2000, entitled WidebandCommunication System for the Home, to Robert R. Miller, II and Jesse E.Russell, and

2. U.S. Pat. No. 6,111,895 issued on Aug. 29, 2000, entitled Wide BandTransmission Through Wire, to Robert R. Miller, II, Jesse E. Russell andRichard R. Shively.

We claim:
 1. A method of providing automated telephone directoryassistance, comprising steps of: providing a user interface allowingentry of a directory assistance query; appending an address that isuniquely associated with an addressable cable set top device to areceived directory assistance query; transmitting the directoryassistance query and the address associated with the cable set topdevice to a computerized directory assistance server over at least aportion of a local loop network; searching a directory assistancedatabase based on at least the received directory assistance query andthe address associated with the cable set top device; prioritizingresults produced by searching based on a geographical proximity of eachsearch result to a geographical location from which directory assistancequery was entered; appending the address associated with the cable settop device to the results; transmitting the results and the addressassociated with the cable set top device over at least a portion of thelocal loop network to the cable set top device; and communicating theresults through the user interface.
 2. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising steps of: indicating that additional information is availablefor at least one of the results; and providing additional informationfor at least one of the results in response to a request for additionalinformation.
 3. The method of claim 2, further comprising a step ofautomatically dialing a telephone number associated with a result inresponse to a request to automatically dial the telephone number.
 4. Themethod of claim 3, further comprising a step of storing theautomatically dialed telephone number for use in prioritizing subsequentdirectory assistance queries.
 5. The method of claim 4, furthercomprising a step of prioritizing the results based upon at least oneautomatically dialed telephone number that was previously stored inresponse to a request to store the automatically dialed telephonenumber.
 6. The method of claim 1, further comprising a step of receivingthe directory assistance query verbally in natural language through theuser interface.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising steps of:storing the geographical location associated with the cable set topdevice based on an in-line tap that uniquely identifies the geographicallocation of the cable set top device; and using the stored geographicallocation associated with the cable set top device for prioritizing theresults based upon the geographical proximity of each result to thegeographical location of the cable set top device.
 8. Apparatus forproviding automated telephone directory assistance, comprising a userinterface allowing entry of a directory assistance query; means forappending an address that is uniquely associated with an addressablecable set top device to a received directory assistance query; means fortransmitting the directory assistance query and the address associatedwith the cable set top device to a computerized directory assistanceserver over at least a portion of a local loop network; means forsearching a directory assistance database based on at least the receiveddirectory assistance query and the address associated with the cable settop device; means for prioritizing results produced by searching basedon a geographical proximity of each search result to a geographicallocation from which directory assistance query was entered; means forappending the address associated with the cable set top device to theresults; means for transmitting the results and the address associatedwith the cable set top device over at least a portion of the local loopnetwork to the cable set top device; and means for communicating theresults through the user interface.
 9. The apparatus of claim 8, furthercomprising: means for indicating that additional information isavailable for at least one of the results; and means for providingadditional information for at least one of the results in response to arequest for additional information.
 10. The apparatus of claim 9,further comprising means for automatically dialing a telephone numberassociated with a result in response to a request to automatically dialthe telephone number.
 11. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprisingmeans for storing the automatically dialed telephone number for use inprioritizing subsequent directory assistance queries.
 12. The apparatusof claim 11 further comprising means for prioritizing the results basedupon at least one automatically dialed telephone number that waspreviously stored in response to a request to store the automaticallydialed telephone number.
 13. The apparatus of claim 8, furthercomprising means for receiving the directory assistance query verballyin natural language through the user interface.
 14. The apparatus ofclaim 8, further comprising: means for storing the geographical locationassociated with the cable set top device based on an in-line tap thatuniquely identifies the geographical location of the cable set topdevice; and means for using the stored geographical location associatedwith the cable set top device for prioritizing the results based uponthe geographical proximity of each result to the geographical locationof the cable set top device.